


Totentanz

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Anita Blake, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Animator, Anita Blake Fusion, Hunter - Freeform, Lamia Jackson, M/M, Police Procedural, Soul Bond, Vampire Derek, Vampire Peter, Werewolf, Zombies, piskies, potty mouth, vampire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:27:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is an animator, working mostly freelance he's also a licensed vampire hunter for the state of California. He knew his day was bad when he got the phone call about a terrible murder and a vampire, except he knows the vampire didn't do it, but he still has to negotiate the Master of the City and other hunters who think that the Master is covering for them. It doesn't make his argument any better when they know he's bonded to the vampire Derek Hale, but it's not like he had a choice in the matter.</p><p>An Anita Blake Fusion where Stiles is an animator, Scott is still a werewolf, Derek's a vampire and Peter's in charge.<br/>First person. Rating may be subject to change (but I doubt it) Tags to be added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I knew from the off it was going to be a bad day, sometimes you just know. I woke up with my phone going off. Worse yet it was "I fought the law and the law won" which meant it was Morell. Morell was the chief of the RPIT, or Rippit - although Greenberg at the office was trying to get people to call them the Frogs - it hadn't taken off yet, but I always had to stop myself calling them that or it would take off. The RPIT or Regional Paranormal Investigative Taskforce, or the Spook Squad had come into force after Addison v Clark forced the US to accept Vampires as legal people with legal rights who paid taxes, but mostly they were the cops who did the clean up, and if Morell was phoning me at, I looked at the clock, 11am when she knew I didn't get up till at least three on a good day - shit had gone down.

I'm an animator which meant I do all my work at night, I keep night hours, and I hadn't crawled into my bed until gone nine so if Morell was phoning me at eleven shit had gone down.

The RPIT wasn't a career move people wanted and it was mostly cops who had done something, or were investigated one time and had no other prospects but when one of them was a werewolf who could hear them lie they had all got on the straight and narrow pretty quickly, especially as Morell might be a tiny black woman, but she was one of the fiercest things I had ever come across, and I'd banished a demon.

I patted across the bed for my phone and hoped I answered with my name. It said something about the severity of the case that it was Morell herself who was calling. "Sorry about phoning so late," she started with. I knew she wasn't. "But the shit has hit the fan, there was a body found last night, we didn't think it was anything you'd be interested in, and then five past six, six minutes before sun up a vampire comes strolling in and confesses."

"So you've got a stiff in holding, why phone me, you know I can't wake them up if the sun's out, I'm an animator, not a miracle worker."

"He's awake and sitting in the cell singing actually," Fuck. I thought to myself, how old was he if he was awake when the sun came out. There were lots of vampires in Beacon Hills, but I doubted that I could count on one hand how many of them could stay awake an hour past sun up. "We got the warrant and everything, Judge Mills." Double fuck, Judge Mills was one of the hardest to get a warrant from, it was a standing joke that if you got a warrant from Mills you had video evidence of someone doing the thing, they'd confessed to the thing, and captain America himself had left a witness statement saying they'd done the thing. I had the phone wedged between my ear as I tried to dress, if Morell had the warrant it was dark clothes that washed easy, I was being called in for an execution.

For legal reasons every RPIT had an affiliated executioner, someone who was trained, I had to laugh at that, and mentally prepared for the act of killing vampires who had been proven to have broken the law. Because of reasons a vamp couldn't be held in penitentary so it was a simple case of once there was enough proof a warrant was issued and someone like me was called in. The executioners were almost always animators because we had an immunity to a vamp's gaze. Or to put it simply, you could raise the dead, the state considered you capable of putting them back down.

Fuck - I hated this part of my job. I had been nicely tucked in my nice warm bed, wrapped around Wicket, my long term sleeping partner, (an 1985 Ewok plush that my Mom had bought long before I was born for pretty much the same purpose, and might have been worth a lot of money if it hadn't been slept with for nearly forty years, snotted on, cried on, coughed on and sweated on, nevertheless those few in the know about my bed partners knew about Wicket. He was just the right height, and if I got enough time off to actually watch a movie he watched it too.

My jeans were tolerably clean. "I'm on my way, but what can you tell me, Morell? No, what aren't you telling me?"

"It's Gerik." Wow, the shit just didn't stop coming, did it? Gerik was the oldest vampire in the State, he was old enough to remember the birth of Christ, but he wasn't a master. He reached his peak about a hundred years into his unlife and stayed the same forever. He was also mild, meek and survived because he was a lick spittle. Of all the vamps in the three counties I overlooked the last one I expected to go mad and eat someone it was Gerik. "And I'm sure he didn't do it." Fuck fuck fuck. "But he confessed and we had the warrant before the autopsy came back, and whoever it was killed the girl, I don't think it's even one of ours." Fuck fuck fuck. "But we have the warrant and he won't recant he's adamant he did it, and you know the protocol." Gerik made tea for the Master of the city's guests, that was it. There were new born vamps stronger than Gerik. I actually liked him - as much as any vamp.

The protocol was explicit, I had until sundown to behead him. Unless he recanted within three hours of the warrant being issued he was beheaded. It had clearly been three hours if Morell was calling me. This was a clusterfuck. It would look like we were targetting the Master of the City and there was a possibility that Gerik had been rolled and the protocol was in place for a reason, I hated the protocol but I understood it, and I'd have Peter at my neck as soon as the sun went down. Fuck.

"Yep." Morell said, meaning I'd cursed down the line. "Of epic proportions, and we're locked in place by it."

"And Gerik's still awake?" I asked.

"Yeah," Morell said as I pulled on my boots, I used to wear vans, two weeks on the job and my first commission went to a pair of steel toe capped doc martens and I maintain they were the absolute best thing I ever spent money on, comfortable, plaid, and silent, and very easy to clean. You could tell a good animator by the quality of his boots. "He asked for you."

"I have no idea how I'm going to save him, we can't just call Peter, and I lament the day I got his number, because he won't be up till at least an hour before sunset and we have what, three hours on the warrant."

"Two." Morell corrected.

"I'm on my way, send someone out for coffee, I'm going to need it." She laughed as she hung up, we were all going to need more than just coffee.

\--

After New Mexico, which was a disaster no one mentioned in my presence, I had finally traded in my beloved jeep wrangler for a more practical volvo. I hated the volvo but animators didn't use their wage to buy something flashy, although they could afford it, it became about security, and crumple zones, and trunk space and insurance deductibles. So I had a shit brown volvo estate from the eighties, but safe in the knowledge that I had an arsenal the national guard would have been proud of in a locked trunk in the back, my tool box which contained the stuff I needed to get to easily, including several pairs of purloined overalls from the crime scene techs, and a foot long tanto that I could easily strap to my thigh. Two browning high powered hand guns, one with safety rounds, one with wooden bullets with a silver nitrate core - vamp killers, and a large bottle of silver nitrate and the sort of syringe you see in a vet's office.

Under that was the stuff I needed for animating, but apart from a _gris gris_ on the handle to discourage thieves there was nothing in that drawer that anyone would want to steal.

There was also two spare pairs of shoes. As I said, I'd learned this shit the hard way. There's nothing like having to run over a vampire for your car to fold around him to move from Toyota's to a five star rated volvo, and the gas mileage wasn't that bad for all that I was driving around a shit coloured wardrobe on firestar tyres, with velour interior.

And no one tried to steal it.

They tried to steal the stuff inside it. I lost count of the amount of smashed windows I had that first year before people realised if I was driving a shit brown volvo I wasn't going to keep anything valuable in it, but they never actually stole it.

I kept hoping that I'll have to ram another vampire so the insurance will give me a courtesy car for a week or two, but I'd had no luck yet.

\--

After a lot of discussions RPIT had been moved out of the sheriff's station and into a more secure building down the street that they called the Annex, it was laid out just the same but fewer people worked in it and the top floor was given over to useless paperwork that should have been shredded years, if not decades ago. My dad was the local sheriff and I wholeheartedly supported the move from his sheriff's station. Technically the RPIT were state police, but that was a mere technicality, they were considered detectives in the area and had their own team for the emergency responders baseball team. I did mention that Beacon Hills was that kind of town - well apart from the large supernatural community.

It meant if the thing with Gerik was wrapped up quickly I could lunch with my dad, which was always good, normally I had my lunch when he had supper, and I just knew he'd been eating burgers and fries which he wasn't supposed to have because he had high cholesterol. I knew he was sneaking too. So I went up the stairs to Maisie on the counter, and she waved me in, noting down on her form that I was in the building - in case of fire - and carrying my work box.

Morell had made good on the coffee, going down to the Luna Cafe down the street, which was run by the loveliest pair of old werewolves, and who put roasted their own beans with vanilla. It meant the situation might be worse than I thought.

I checked the plaque on the wall, just like I did every time I came in, it was Morell's reminder that they were never going to leave. If you're going through Hell - keep going. It was her personal motto and there were days it might as well be mine.

I took the coffee in it's to go mug, nodded at the officers, checked the warrant posted on the door- hung from a clipboard - to make sure it was all in order even though it was a pro-forma thing, and then went into the vamp cell.

The entire room was lined with mountain ash on the floor except for the front where there was a counter that could be lifted and closed to form a seal. It didn't seem secure but there wasn't a supe alive that could cross it. Gerik was sat, lotus fashion on the floor, although there were metal benches bolted to the floor with concrete pillars to hold them in place. When I said most supes could bench press a car, I wasn't lying.

I sat down on the bench with my workbox beside me and uncapped my coffee, something I wouldn't have done for the vast majority of supes in the area, "Gerik, what the fuck, dude?"

Gerik looked like Thorn Oakenshield if he had been a giant and not a dwarf. He was easily three hundred pounds of bearded barbarian looking teddy bear, who had been an actual barbarian. His beard was braided and had beads in it, and rings and things, and he was wearing a black adidas track suit. He was also a really weak vamp, and the supernatural equivalent of a crazy cat lady. I wasn't kidding, he had taken so many cats in over the years that Peter had given him an old house on the edge of town and done it up as a cat sanctuary so that his nest wasn't infested with them. He took them in, doctored and neutered them and let them live in absolute luxury, and the local cats knew it. If a cat went missing in Beacon Hills Gerik's Cat Sanctuary was the first place anyone checked - because the cats went there on their own.

So of all the vamps in Beacon Hills and the local areas the one least likely to have committed a murder, and performed a blood-eagle at that, according to the warrant, was Gerik.

He apologised to the cats when he had them spayed.

"I did it." Gerik said in a voice like a rumble of thunder.

"Why?" Gerik blinked like no one had asked him that before.

"I wanted to." He said.

"Despite that it's really clear that you couldn't have done it because you don't have a saw with you, when you came in." I was leading him, whoever had done the murders had used bolt clippers not a saw.

"I threw it away in the preserve." He said and I knew there and then he was lying. So I told him that, and sighed.

"Look, is this something Peter's making you do?"

"No," Gerik answered, "Peter would be very displeased with me."

"Then why."

"I asked my master to let me die, he said I should take a year to think upon it, and bound me that I could not take my own life in that time." I nodded, that sounded about right, death wasn't something you could take back if you changed your mind. "That was thirty years ago and when I bring the subject up he vacillates and sends me away telling me that he will think upon it, but he never does."

"So when you found the body you thought of this."

"Yes," Gerik said, "I am loathe to put you in this position, for I know my master will be displeased with your department, but I am not a strong man, and whilst he sleeps he cannot save me." Fuck, it really was worse than I thought. Suicide by cop, Peter was going to have kittens, actually he was probably going to have Gerik's house of cats slaughtered and burned and I'd be lucky if I wasn't among them.

"I'm going to need all that in writing." I told him, he told me he had written it out before I had come here in a letter addressed to his master. "Do you have any last requests?" As I said, I liked Gerik, Finstock, my manager and he had worked out a thing years ago where he dropped off all the dead chickens from our animating business to the cat sanctuary, I saw him all the time.

"I'd like to see the sun." He said. What could I say to that? I drained my coffee, and put the cup down, and opened my work box, I had a bottle of kids sunscreen in there, which I threw to him. It wasn't much but it would stop the worst of the burning when I opened the metal shutters. Sunlight would kill a vamp, although most of them were safely underground and dead when it came out. It proved how old that Gerik was that he had pretty much evolved past the need to sleep, although he had been out of the sun completely. I wasn't nearly cruel enough to let him die from sun exposure, I had my tanto, but if he wanted to see the sun, I could do that.

He smeared the stuff over his face and hands, it was thick, and green until it was rubbed in so you could see where it was, and he looked a little silly with it all over his thick black beard. When he was happy, I pushed the button on the metal shutters, and took my tanto, to stand behind him.

The sun fell upon him and he murmured, "I had forgotten how beautiful it was" as he looked out the chained window over the empty parking lot and to the trees. I would have liked him to have a nicer final view but you can't have everything. I counted to twenty to when he started to smoulder and parts of his skin were turning to ash, and then I cut off his head.

\---

I knew that the detectives would deal with Gerik's body (he would be cremated by sundown, his ashes gathered into a state urn (and it said so much about the vamps that now they had their own brand of urn for the state to use) the would gather up his effects and put them in a premade wooden box with a quickly engraved brass plate that had his name. I made sure that Gerik's letter, written on BH Sheriff's Department letterhead in dipping ink - old vampires older than two centuries dipped every type of pen, including ball points, and sealed with what appeared to be candle wax. They must have run out of the sealing wax again, I'd have to get them more.

I used their phone to call Lydia at the morgue, to leave a message on her voice mail asking me to call after five with any information about the victim because if I was going to see Peter, which I would have to do, I wanted as much information as I could get. It was just approaching noon when I left the call, so I got in my volvo and drove to Animators Inc, (Finstock wanted to call it Monsters Inc but Greenberg talked him down with words like law suits and copyright). Finstock had bought an old boxing Gym for their head quarters, converting it into offices but the old locker room and doctors office were still intact, and smelled like old cheese, but there was a cot in the doctor's office with an alarm clock and right now it was calling out my name like the Christ child had been reborn.

Rosalie, the day receptionist, - like most Animator's office ours really didn't start get going until dark fall, (you couldn't raise the dead in day light after all) was on duty, so I told her I was going to crash in the back, and to move any appointments I had to after eight, eventually someone would make the effort of moving the cot into my office because it might as well have been there, no one ever got Greenberg out of his nice warm bed in the day time. I sent a text to Isaac, Peter's _Pomme de Sang_ , and crashed out on the cot, with my alarm set for four thirty.

After New Mexico more often than not I shared my dreams with Derek. The only way to stop it would have been not to be asleep when he was, the good thing was most of the time that I didn't remember them.

This one, I got the impression, I would remember. Derek was wearing jeans and a henley, Peter often insisted Derek dressed well, but given the opportunity he did not. He was barefoot and sat on the edge of a canopied bed pressed against the wall. There was a small table with a bucket of fried chicken sitting on it, on top of a pristine white lace table cloth. There were paintings over the fireplace, but no fire, and a few candlesticks here and there but the whole room was lit by two free standing lights with Tiffany shades. The floor was bare stone apart from a few tattered wool rugs, and there was a large velvet arm chair facing the bed.

I had actually been in this room long before New Mexico and the dreams. It was Derek's own private sanctuary. The fried chicken was new though. It must have belonged to Derek's _Pomme de Sang_. "You seem distressed." Derek said, sitting back on the bed as I moved to the chair - my chair because every time he came I sat in it.

"One of those days." I told him. I was never sure how much of these dreams were real and I didn't want anyone carrying tales to Peter until I got the opportunity to talk to him myself. Peter was unpredictable at best. I scratched at the scars on my arms, they always itched around Derek, probably because the burn scars I got in his defence before New Mexico. I had had them tattooed over but still they always itched in his presence.

Most animators were covered in scars, even Greenberg. We did most of our work with chickens, a life for a life after all, but often we had to cut ourselves for that extra power kick, it was normal - we all did it. Most of us learned through cutting ourselves so we knew how to work our power, and to fear it. The pain taught us control. So our fingers and arms were always scarred, then came the scars I got in the line of duty, three claw marks down my right arm from a rogue wolf before I put a bullet in his head. I had a cross burned on my chest from a vamp's slave in defence of it's master. But there were long thin slashes on my arms, from the thing that had saw me bonded to Derek, and they itched in his presence.

I had nearly died that day.

"Leave your arms alone," Derek gruffed. "You hungry?"

"This is just a dream." I told him.

"Then you don't have to worry about the drumsticks going straight to your thighs, do you?" He stood up, lifted the bucket with his fingers, even when I didn't dream about Derek like this I dreamt about his fingers. I took the bucket from him because I was sort of hungry and he was right it was a dream.

"You can't miss the taste of fried chicken like this, you've been a vampire far too long." Part of the thing between us meant that Derek could taste my food, and worse yet I had acquired his palatte, and found myself craving food that I wouldn't normally touch with a barge pole, like chicken livers fried with onions and apples.

Derek just smiled with too much teeth. Well, fried chicken was fried chicken, who was I to argue.


	2. Chapter 2

I am an animator which means I work nights and sleep most days. I didn't need Greenberg popping in to the doctor's office at half two making enough noise to wake the dead - even without his animation powers. I had a licence to kill vampires, I wondered if I could cover annoying inept animators too.

There were three animators, a medium and a telemetrist under Finstock's management. Finstock was crazy but amazing at the business side of things, he had been a teacher of economics and coached high school lacrosse but after a few choice phrases upset some of the parents - there was debate over which phrases because Finstock was a lottery of inappropriate phrases and imagery- he set up the agency. When I had needed a manager I was surprised that Finstock was setting up an agency but it turned out that he had a very specific brand of crazy that was perfect for dealing with the supernatural.

Greenberg was a weak and mostly powerless animator, he could raise the newly dead and had the basic immunity to a vampire's gaze, as well as the basic knowledge to not meet a vamp's eyes, but for anything else he was useless. He couldn't even make a decent cup of coffee truth be told. The other one was Hopkirk and he was semi permanent secondment to the FBI in regards to an ongoing golem case that we weren't supposed to know too much about. The medium, Zelda, only worked days, so I barely saw her, and did house calls more often than not. The telemetrist, Daehler, kept himself to himself, wore thick gloves and layers of clothes and his gift had made him so misanthropic no one ever questioned that he never came into work and people went to him.

Greenberg came in to the doctor's office where I was crashed out and deliberately woke me. And he had the dishwater he called coffee all over him.

About six months Greenberg got hit by two curses, one was a basic bad luck hex, the sort that fades on it's own after a while, and the other, an exponential hex, the sort that fed in on itself, but was in and of itself harmless, together they weren't quite so harmless unfortunately. Not only was he incredibly unlucky he couldn't swear. Seriously, it was a hilarious combination, poor Greenberg had no luck, literally. Of course sometimes you had to laugh when he got his fingers caught in his locker with a cry of "Mother F-ishcakes!"

"The Crain locker." I grumbled as I went to go past him. "There's a pile of shirts just for you. Finstock's orders."

"Not what I was going to ask," Greenberg said, "I was looking for burn ointment," he showed me the welt on his thumb, "I think my luck is getting worse."

"Well, I suppose it's darkest before the dawn." I said, and went to my own locker and the first aid kit, rooting around for the zambuk. It was a pine scented wonder gel that I had discovered from a brujeria in New Mexico that you could get easily online and was good for everything. I had started buying it in bulk, it was perfect for the small cuts and grazes that I got in my everyday work, and I gave one tin of it to Greenberg. "It's good for most things, let me know when you need more."

"You are a god amongst animators." He told me, "but I don't think my luck is any worse than yours, I just had a coffee pot explode on me, and you have an appointment with the Master of the City." He sat down on the wooden bench, "what's he like? I mean, in an intellectual way?"

How, I wondered, to describe Peter Hale?

"Want to go in my place?" I asked, "he's charming, handsome, manipulative, cruel, wicked, amusing. I can give you a list of character traits each of which would be true and contradictory." I pulled my tee up over my head, "I am going to grab a shower before I meet with him, make sure Rosalie moved all my appointments. Unless, you want to go for me."

Greenberg laughed at me. "You are well and truly fishcaked, my friend." The worst thing was I knew it was true.

\---

Totentanz was a club in the Industrial area of Beacon Hills that was linked via lots of underground tunnels and burrows to every other vamp owned business in the city. If you wanted an audience with the Master of the City you made an appointment at Totentanz. Almost every business associated with the vamps had that sort of name, something grim and usually an in-joke of some kind.

Totentanz was the German version of the term Danse Macabre and it was a popular goth club. Goths loved the vamps, it was just one of those things.

Unlike most of the clientele, even those early in the night gathering around to open the club, I was dressed for battle. A longish suede hoodie with half sleeves, showing from the elbow down, the black and grey stripe from the patterned tee underneath it, one I was happy to sacrifice, thick blue jeans, and a grey scarf. All things that I could shed and didn't mind sacrificing. I had my tanto in my boot but other than that I was unarmed. They'd take my guns from me, but I always had a few ampoules of silver nitrate and colloidal silver in my pockets - just in case.

I had paired it with my striped docs, because anything less than looking perfect meant Peter wouldn't see me.

Isaac was Peter's _Pomme de Sang_ , which meant he was in the rare position of being Peter's main meal. It gave him a rare amount of access, but also a certain arrogance. Isaac was about my age, I was never sure if he was a year older or younger because he hadn't attended school here, but Peter had taken him in after his father had literally thrown him to the wolves. Isaac had been left half dead on the steps of the Full Moon Bakery across town. The wolves had turned him to save his life and when Peter had taken over the city and revealed the wolf was his animal to call he struck up a bargain with the local Ulfric, the wolf pack leader, for wolves to serve as _Pomme de Sang_ so humans didn't.

It not only gave the wolves a certain cachet but wolves healed so much faster that apart from keeping Isaac fed to keep his blood up, it meant that Peter could feed daily without worry.

I still didn't know who Derek's was. Not that I cared. I mean apart from our accidental bond I didn't think of Derek at all.

Isaac was tall and actually looked like a super model angel, with cheekbones and curls. I was just a little funny looking, brown hair, brown eyes, a piggy nose and a mouth that made it look like I'd been punched. I hated going anywhere with Isaac, I always felt so inferior. It didn't hurt that he had that lupine grace, and Peter made a point that Isaac was always dressed impeccably. Peter was the only vampire in the US with a subscription to Vogue Uomo, I knew that because he left his old issues around where I could find them. You'd think someone with code 5 genetic material wouldn't be so damn vain.

All vamps had code 5 genetic material, it was the fancy scientific way of saying for some inexplicable reason they didn't reflect light in artificial sources, their voices couldn't be recorded - and en masse they had taken to texting like it was manna from Heaven, but it just meant that they were reliant on their human servants, their thralls and their _Pommes des Sang_.

So for some reason a vamp with no reflection, and no ability to be photographed, was the vainest person I had ever met - bar none. It didn't help that he was actually preternaturally good looking. Most vamps were - sometimes it was the reason that they had been chosen.

"I should warn you," Isaac said, scratching at his neck under the scarf, where Peter would have fed from him, "he woke up cranky."

Fuckity fuck fuck.

I had Gerik's box under my arm, and I had made an appointment, running off with my tail between my legs wouldn't make a good impression. I could do this. I was a bad ass vampire slayer and it wasn't even that I was scared that Peter would hurt me, because I didn't think he would, I knew Derek wouldn't let him, that whatever the bond between me and Derek was - one Derek had given me to save my life - would mean that it would hurt Derek too, but Peter didn't need violence to hurt you.

Vamps on the whole were not nice people. Especially older ones. It wasn't a creature of the night thing, but instead the fact that years of secrecy, power and violence weeded out the weaker ones, the ones that were left were cunning, dangerous creatures and the older they were the more dangerous they were - and Gerik, who had been as dangerous as a dish towel, but looked very threatening and had been amazing at the basic running of things - so good that he was considered a valuable commodity and given the protection of many vampires much more dangerous than he could ever be.

Peter Hale had survived a long time not by being strong, although he was, but instead by being much smarter and more ruthless than anyone else, and in time he had risen to Master of the City, and any Master Vampire in a bad mood was a problem, a Master of the City Master vampire was a catastrophe.

It didn't help that I'd been the one to put down his predecessor - but that had been before New Mexico.

Most vampires after a century or so changed their name to something unique to them, they lived with a single name that became feared throughout their world until they became powerful enough to become a _Soudre de Sang_ , a fountainhead who served to animate all the vampires in their line when they took on a cognomen. Peter was a type of vamp called a Mora who could feed on fear, where Derek, although technically his nephew was an incubus meaning he could instill lust in his prey. It was not a good combination, together the two of them were powerful and deadly, Derek could literally make a person desire Peter until his fear stopped their heart, and Peter could make someone fear the very lust in their bones. Peter had kept his name, so great was his reputation by then.

Peter couldn't hypnotise me, but he could make me piss myself in terror just because he didn't like my pants.

And he was cranky.

Fuck.

I was beginning think that Greenberg's bad luck hex was catchy.

\----

Peter was not so gauche that he had a throne room, he had an conference room with an actual conference table, flourescent lighting, horrible art, and a few sofas for more intimate meetings. It was there that I met him. Peter's pet Lamia, Jackson, was fussing about at the back of the room, looking in one of the small cupboards for something. There was a coffee pot on the cupboard but it wasn't on.

Peter had a tea set laid out on a tray on the small glass table in front of him. He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit and had his legs crossed.

"Stiles," he said with a smile as oily as his hair, "so good to see you, I'd offer you tea but I can't seem to locate Gerik at all."

"About that," I began, then I put the box on the table, "my condolences on your loss."

Peter looked at the box, then at me, and then he growled, like a werewolf new to the shift. "Gerik?" he asked.

I nodded.

"And what, pray tell, could Gerik have done that warranted execution by the state? Did he steal the governor's cat?" His tone was like ice and I could feel the tendrils of fear creeping all over his words, like an oily scum.

"He confessed to a murder." I said, swallowing. It wasn't a good idea to show fear to a vampire, but with Peter if he didn't think you were scared he just tried harder. "I know he didn't do it, but the warrant was served and there was no alternative. I made it quick." I licked my lips, I wasn't going to run, I wasn't, no matter how scared he was making me, running was just an invitation to a predator.

Peter opened the box and looked at the letter. "Candle wax," he muttered to himself, "I shall have to send them more sealing wax, I begin to suspect one of the detectives of eating it." Jackson came over and draped himself over Peter's shoulder, so their heads were alongside each other to read the letter. It was a sexual gesture and it didn't surprise me. "How very clever of Gerik, surprising really, it shows much more initiative than I would normally consider him capable of." He folded the letter and put it back in the box, before he closed it and handed it all to Jackson. "Be a pet, love, and find this a home with the others."

Then he looked at me, and his eyes were that strange metallic blue that the Hales got when they were using their power. Derek's eyes, which were normally green, did it too. "Is there anything else?" He asked as Jackson left the room.

"I spoke to Dr Martin." I blabbed it out, "she doesn't know if the murder was supernatural, we are not, at the moment, looking for anyone else." My hand went to my cross automatically, it didn't ease the waves of fear I was giving off at the moment.

"Gerik's letter mentioned that he found the victim in it's death throes, he mentioned a blood-eagle." Peter said bluntly.

"I didn't see the body, I can't comment." I said. You couldn't lie to a vamp, they could hear it, but that didn't mean that the truth had to be absolutely in their favour either. Everything I said to Peter was true, but that didn't mean it was everything.

"You will keep me informed, won't you, Stiles." He was smiling at me now, a smirk where he pressed his lips together and curled up the corner of his mouth, "you can run along now, unless, of course you know how to work this new fangled tea pot." I looked at the tea pot in question, it looked like a jug with a lid and some sort of filter at the bottom. "That Gerik did not include in his letter."

I had bought that tea pot for Gerik, it was called a tea infuser and I did know how it worked.

"You pour the water in, let it sit," I told him, finally feeling on safer ground. "Then put it on the cup, gravity will do the rest."

"The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away all demons, a little-known fact," Peter said as he watched the tea leaves stir in the infuser. It was a quote but I didn't know it. "There are so many demons out and about today, will you stay for tea?, young people today are always so busy," he continued without waiting for me to answer. "Tell your father I inquired after him, and Stiles," he smiled at me, leaning forward on his couch. Peter didn't need fear abilities to make my blood run cold. "I won't slaughter the cats just because Gerik was the only person in this damn kiss who could make me a decent cup of tea."


	3. Chapter 3

My relationship with Derek was not "complicated", it was complicated the first time we met when I was eight and Peter was negotiating with the Master of the City in Portland to send me for training there with Burkhardt and I said he was hot. That was when he realised I was immune to his glamour. It was complicated when I came back for the summers every year and Morell used me to drop things off at Totentanz because I was there and free labour and Derek always made a point to wave at me, and of course I had a crush, Derek was hot, vampire or not. It was complicated when I passed the legislation and became a bonafide licensed vamp executioner for the state and he smiled at me and my knees still went weak.

It was after New Mexico the basic description of "complicated" turned into an almightly gordian knot of clusterfuck.

You see when a vamp really likes a person...

No, that's a bad way to start. Vampires are night creatures, when the sun is up they're about as lively as a slab of meat, because pretty much that's what they are. Until their _soudre de sang_ is out of bed they're dead. So they developed a thing. They have three levels of minion, a thrall, which is a human who is deeply rolled to do their every whim, a Renfield which is a bitten human who will do anything for the "bite" and will almost certainly never get it, the RPIT call them junkies because that's how they behave, and then there is their human servants.

A human servant is a human who has gone through four trials and for it got accelerated healing, long life - they live as long as the master vamp they serve - protection as a member of the kiss, immunity to glamour, yadda yadda. Not every master vamp, and it has to be a master, has the ability to do it, or even the nerve because it is literally sharing themselves with the servant, although it offers loyalty, cough cough, advanced feeding, extra strength etc. It also makes the servant completely immune to vampire suggestion, as opposed to an animator's partial immunity, and much, much better at killing them.

New Mexico meant I wasn't Derek's human servant, not completely, but I was halfway there.

He had done it to save my life, which in turn saved his. And now if we ever completed the last two steps I would be his immortal paramour for all eternity.

Yeah, that was going to happen.

To make matters worse because I was an animator Derek didnt just get a small power boost by being able to draw on my ability - he got an unholy power boost, one that made him almost as strong as Peter despite Peter being nearly twice his age.

So if I was in Totentanz I had to go and see Derek. He not only knew I was there, but he was, to an extent, aware that I was dithering and trying to think up excuses not to go and see him.

I wanted to man up and go into his part of the nest and say "hey, Derek, I was just calling in to your uncle about the whole Gerik fiasco and thought I'd say hi, but gotta dash, huge pile of appointments to go to, bye." Because that was more adult but damnit, I wasn't mature enough to just do that.

Even if Derek hadn't been a lust vampire I'd want him, but I didn't do vamps and that was a cast iron rule, end of conversation... whatever.

Even without the magic Derek was gorgeous and apart from the whole blood sucking fiend thing he had going on he was a good guy, and really funny, and he used a shifter _pomme de sang_ so I knew he wasn't killing people, but the thing was - I also knew he had. Derek wanted me, and I wanted Derek, but it was never going to be that easy. So I was vacillating outside his apartment in the complex because I was just too chicken shit to say hi.

I had just gone outside to cross the nest, it was quicker because Derek wanted as much distance between himself and his uncle as possible at the best of times, when my phone rang. The nest might have had wifi but it's cell reception was shit.

It was Lydia.

Lydia Martin was a supe, but barely. She had an affinity for death, not entirely unlike mine, but unlike me she couldn't raise the dead. The word of a zombie wasn't admissable in court, so although I could raise a zombie to say who had killed them and how it took people like Lydia to make a conviction stick. She was the local medical examiner because as she came more and more into her power she needed, more and more, to be around the dead. The fact she was a certified genius just made her much better at her job.

"Hey, Lyds," I answered.

"Stiles, are you still at Totentanz?" I told her that I was, "I need you to pass a message to Peter, it's important. The body, it was a Cygne." A Cygne was a very rare type of shifter, one that could turn into a swan, but I couldn't see how that would affect Peter at all, his animal to call was the wolf and they were as common as streetlamps. "It gets worse, the blood-eagle, I think it was a misdirection, he had enough ketamine in his system to OD an elephant,  that's what killed him." I made acknowledging noises but I still had no idea how this had anything to do with Peter. "They forced him into a partial shift and cut out his wings and the mechanisms that cause the shift." I went quiet, there was only one answer to that, and I really didn't want to hear it. "They took his shift from him, Stiles, the Bloodeagle was clearly just a taunt, giving him wings to replace the ones they taught, it was such a mess I didn't see it until I was stitching him back up. You know what this means, right?"

I did. "A _peltier_ ," I said the word like it hurt my mouth. "Here."

"I know this takes it straight back to Morell and has nothing to do with Peter or even you, but..."

Jackson.

Jackson might have been a prick, and he might have broken Lydia's heart when they were dating, but he was still a very very rare shifter, and a _peltier_ would do everything it could to attain that skin.

"I'll let him know, put Jackson on lockdown, if Jackson listens." That would be a first, Jackson didn't listen to anyone but himself.

"I did try calling him, but you know how hard it is to get signal when they're deep like that." I did know.

"I'll swing back to see Peter and give him the heads up, I'm sure he'll be grateful, Lyds." IT was best to deal with it like this with Lydia, she had a connection to Peter, although she had never told me what it was, and had dated Jackson before he, being Jackson, broke her heart. It was a good thing to owe Peter a favour, he might repay this with a new fur coat (he had a sick sense of humour) or a fruit basket, or he might hold on to it until she needed him and he could discharge the debt. He would see it as a debt he owed.

Whatever relationship that Peter and Jackson had, which was not sexual or based on feeding, the two of them were entwined like snakes - even if Jackson hadn't been one.

I steeled myself, girded my loins, however you wanted to say it. I'd send the message through Derek. Peter was more likely to listen to him anyway but that meant I would actually HAVE to see Derek, rather than just avoid him as I had in many ways been trying to do.

\---

Derek and I were mostly soul bonded. Neither of us had wanted it but it was necessary at the time to save both our lives and no one knew a way to break it. It was permanent and it meant that I was a more powerful animator and he was a stronger vampire who could go longer without feeds. There were reasons that vampires didn't make supernatural humans like myself human servants, because they didn't like power boosts that went both ways. There was the possibility I could take over Derek, if I knew how, but there was records of it happening.

Bonding the souls of a master vampire and a certified vampire slayer was never going to end well.

Derek was dressed when I went in, sat under an old tiffany lamp and reading off a kindle. Unlike most vamps Derek liked some technology. Most of them reacted to it by smashing it on the floor and shouting witchcraft. He didn't acknowledge my existence in his private chambers - he often didn't. So I went across to his small fridge and got myself a soda. "I had a dream about you last night," he said not looking up from his book, I was going to mention about the fried chicken when he added, "Talos was in it."

I dropped the soda, I had just twisted open the bottle and it went everywhere in bright orange splashes. "As soon as I woke I had to check that the portion of his heart I kept was still where I left it. It was." That was when I grabbed the roll of kitchen paper to try and mop up the mess, Derek was so used to this he didn't even look up. "It was not a nice dream."

"You're kidding right," I asked him, "I have dreams about Talos. I wake up from them in a sweat and throw up, a nice dream, fuck, it was a fucking nightmare just admit it."

"Then you are right," he said, "it was a nightmare. It was a simple dream, he was holding you still whilst i ripped your throat out, with my teeth."

At that I eased a little, "you threaten to do that to me all the time." I told him, "I'd be more worried if you did something else like gum my arm or something."

Derek's smile showed far too many teeth for me to be comfortable. His smile, even this facetious one, existed, I think, to remind me that he was a creature of the night, and the reason he didn't eat me was not because I was an impediment to him but because it suited him not to. I couldn't ever forget he was a powerful master vampire that was nearly two hundred and fifty years old, young for their kind, but still powerful enough to be his uncle's second in a power structure based on pure strength. Ruthlessness was considered an asset, not a detriment, and so Derek was strong and he was ruthless, and I amused him. If I ever forgot that I was dead, the fact I could fight back just made me the more appealing prize.

"I need to use your landline, if you don't mind." I said changing the subject. Talos had been dead for over a year, since New Mexico, and his name still made my blood chill in my veins like it was made of ice. "I'm sure you heard about the body."

"I heard about Gerik, yes," he said it tightly. Vamps didn't react to death the same way that humans did, they seemed flippant about it. Peter was upset about his tea, and Derek reacted like it was a complete stranger. I was more upset than he was.

"I am sorry about that, but my hands were tied." I lifted the handset, "he played me, but it looks like the body was killed for it's pelt."

"There hasn't been a _peltier_ in the US since the civil war." Derek corrected me.

"It's a lot easier for humans than vampires to travel, we don't have the light restrictions." Snark with Derek was easy. It was a fear reaction. Some people broke when they got scared, I snarked. Derek said he wouldn't hurt me, he said that it was against a vampire's nature to hurt their human servant, but I was not a human servant - not yet. I only had two of the four marks, and the last two required me both knowing and accepting what was happening, they couldn't happen with me unconscious like the first two had.

"A _peltier_ would be destroyed on sight by any creature of the night." He tried to explain.

"Yet four were killed in Europe last year, look I know it's a death sentence but clearly people still think that the money is worth it. There are always going to be people willing to buy exotic pelts, and because of that there will be _peltiers_. You trust no one but at the same time you don't trust that people are horrible creatures that will kill and skin remarkable creatures for money," I shook my head, "you've been rich too long."

"A _peltier_ isn't your jurisdiction, Stiles," the way he said it was like my work was an amusement he allowed me. Maybe in his head, that's how it was, but I had a wooden bullet that could prove him wrong.

"And what would Peter do if a _peltier_ came after his pet lamia and I didn't even give him a heads up." I was still holding the handset.

"The body, what was it?"

"A swan." I answered, "Lydia," Derek's eyes tightened in revulsion, he despised Lydia for reasons I didn't know, and I wasn't even sure they had ever met, "called me between actually seeing Peter and seeing you. The case is being bounced back to Morell, she's very good, but I promised Lyds I'd meet her for dinner between cases tonight. My jobs tonight are simple stuff, "where did you leave the silverware" that sort of thing. I haven't had a quiet night in," I sighed, "too fucking long."

"Then have dinner with me." He said it calmly. "There is a new restaurant I am quite eager to try." To try anything like that he needed me. "I am told that they have the finest wine selection in North California, almost completely from France and Italy. It is, I think, a nice change to the New Zealand and California wines, perhaps I am simply homesick." Vamps could drink anything, it just didn't do anything for them, they couldn't swallow food although there were always a few who tried to eat, their tastebuds were different now. I had heard of a restaurant in New York that served shifter blood, with _pomme de sang_ who were treated like rock stars for the vampires that could afford the charge.

"I don't drink," I paused, "wine." He smiled at that, getting the joke.

"No, but you do eat duck, and i have heard many good things about the place." He answered, "you can even invite your Lydia, I have heard many interesting things about her, our medical examiner with an affinity for the dead."

"You and your uncle always forget that although you own all the vampires in the city, you don't own the city."

"Like Beacon Hills is a city." He said rolling his eyes, I had to concede that, it was barely large enough to be a town, but it covered the county. If not for the vampire presence I doubt it would have warranted a Denny's instead of the _sommeliers_ who set up in the area. They didn't get the chefs, but they got the wine selections. Vampires were pretentious, they drank wine.

"Well, I still have to tell the Master of the not-a-city that there is a psycho with a knife after his pet lizard, if for no other reason than Lydia is still kind of fond of him, and I'm still fond of her." Derek was growling, I could hear it. I had been told, by Burkhardt when he trained me, that vampires were territorial, that they were possessive and didn't like to be challenged for what they owned.

"There are two issues I have with your growl, sourfang." I had a tendency to revert to nicknames and insults when he pushed me, sourfang was just an old favourite. "One, Lydia is my friend, one of my closest friends, and I don't think of her like that, I did, once, but I appreciate her more as a friend because we both have an affinity for the dead, do you know how fucking rare that is. It says how fucked up this town is that two of us grew up in the same population of forty thousand or so, but in the same year at high school. And two, I do not belong to you, any more than the town does, so stop with the growling. I'll ask Lyds if she's up for dinner with you, but no promises, ever since your uncle bit her she has a tendency to not like fanged folk."

Derek shrugged, it was a perfect gallic shrug, the sort that people did in movies, every part and parcel of it suggested that of course Lydia would agree to dinner, and the peltier was nothing to worry about - because it was easy to be that sure of yourself when you were immortal.


	4. Chapter 4

I was eight when I manifested as an Animator. That was very early. In most cases it's during puberty the gift appears in little ways, like a girl who gets her period before her parents explained it to her might cause items to fall off the shelf. Enough that she gets tested and someone eventually figures out her poltergeist activity is just burgeoning magic and then teach her to channel it safely. Some people never manifest and some others just have an affinity for the dead. Some know to get taught, like an instinct in them.

It wasn't that easy for me.

I'd love to say my first Animation was my Mom, because there's a sort of evil cruel irony there, but it's not true. My Mom was still alive when it started, although she was dying, but I didn't know it then. Burkhardt said later that I was so surrounded by death it wasn't a wonder that I manifested so soon.

I was at the hospital and I threw a temper tantrum when the nurse tried to get me to go to the waiting room whilst they did another battery of tests on my Mom. I didn't want to go and I threw a full on level ten tanty, as my Mom would have put it.

I emptied the morgue and then collapsed with the dead I'd raised standing guard around me like a wall of zombies.

Apparently there were twenty two dead raised that day, it's still the most I've ever raised in one go. Within a week I was in Portland with Burkhardt, years before starting that sort of apprenticeship than most Animators get. Most apprenticeships like that start after High School. I just ended up transferring. I wasn't there when my Mom died, because I was too dangerous to myself and others. I was there for her funeral, with Burkhardt beside me just in case.

Everything I learned about Animation I learned from Burkhardt. I learned a lot about the supernatural too. I discovered when I was about fifteen that I was much more powerful than he was, and he had, at the time been considered the strongest in the North West.

When I came back to Beacon Hills post college, to my Dad who I had spent as long with as I could at every opportunity - because Burkhardt never tried to keep us apart - it was generally accepted that Finstock would probably die of glee and I'd have to animate him. I still got letters from all over the country offering me much more money to work. I wasn't short of money but the main reason I worked in Beacon Hills was simple - my dad.

Although sat in my piece of shit Volvo I wondered if I could just visit my dad once in a while instead of living here. In the passenger seat, complaining about everything, the car, my driving, other people's driving, traffic lights, the upholstery, the radio, was the nephew of the Master of the City, his second, and my sort of Soul bond.

My Volvo was not that bad, it was a piece of shit but it was a piece of shit I wouldn't mind wrapping around a vampire if it was necessary and there was a vampire in it at the moment I wouldn't have minded ramming. "You could learn to drive, you know." I told Derek as I moved the car into fourth with the stick, it sort of made a grinding noise when it did, but it always did, it didn't stop the car in any way, it was just a bit noisy. It certainly didn't require the face he made.

"I could just buy you a new car," he said bluntly gesturing with his head to the Toyota dealership we were driving past, "you are my human servant, what is mine is yours."

"I'm not," I told him bluntly, "and the point of this car is it's expendable, no one is going to mourn it if it gets thrown away like a piece of garbage."

"Because it is a piece of garbage." Derek filled in. "I am sure we can get you a nice little four wheel sports utility, perhaps one with a prefilled space for the tool box sliding around in the back." He grinned at me, I wanted to punch him in his smug face. "I think your jeep was better than this and it had a draft that could blow me out of the passenger side window."

This was the usual way Derek and I interacted, we sniped at each other until other people complained about the sexual tension. The local Ulfric, the leader of the wolves who worked with Peter, was running a pool of when I would give in.

Apparently although it had started as barely enough to buy a bottle of beer it was getting large enough to buy a mansion with pool. It had it's own hedge fund manager as I understood it, it had long since been invested because after a certain point Peter believed money should be used to make more money. There was talk that it owned the bakery "The Pool" in the town centre. Right now I wouldn't have been surprised.

The thing was if Derek wasn't a vamp I would have been all over him like lichen on stone, but I was an animator, I knew exactly how dangerous vamps were, I was the one who did most of the clean up after all.

"I can't imagine that Lydia will let you pick her up in this." Derek gestured to the Volvo. He really didn't understand that it was expendable, it didn't matter how much I hated it because I wouldn't care if it died in my defence. I had cried over my jeep, although it had served for years and done the run from Beacon Hills to Portland many times and I could fix most if it's problems myself. Animators, as a rule, drove ugly cheap cars that it was almost not worth insuring.

"We're meeting at the restaurant." I said as I pulled into in my designated spot at Animators Inc.

"This isn't the restaurant." Derek said as he fussed with his seat belt, he was never very good with them, I had had to belt him in on several occasions personally. He just argued that he didn't need them, he'd be fine if he went through the windshield in a crash - the truth was I knew that, I was worried about the windshield.

"No, this is work, I have a few appointments to get through before dinner, then after dinner I have an animation. I did try to tell you." He actually looked upset when he got out of the car, "come on, there's plenty of books in the office."

"What kind of appointments?" Derek could be a petulant child. Undead for three hundred years and he still seemed pissed when he wasn't the centre of my attention.

"Nothing worrying, a check whether or not an animation is possible, some possible magical items, then dinner, then I go to the graveyard to sort out the Meng estate. Then I'm all yours."

"And it will be nearly dawn, I am not so naive as to notice it." Derek held the door open for me. Rosalie, the ancient day receptionist had already gone home, it was past six, and Ollie, the night receptionist had taken over. Ollie always made heart eyes at vampires, I never knew if it was a fear reaction or a lust one, but it was in his contract that if he ever showed up with a bite he was fired.

Vamps don't bite, they maul. It's like a rabid dog chewing away the meat to get to the marrow - it's not the pretty little pin pricks you get in the movies, it's like someone hacked at you with thirty tiny axes - trust me, I have the scars, and they're ugly. I'd told Ollie that a few times but he still got a bit starry eyed around vamps, but he practically swooned at Derek who was after all wearing his skinny jeans. You could have told he was undead just by the fact he didn't need circulation in his feet.

Of course as soon as we walked through the waiting room, still with the old benches from the locker rooms, he started sniffing, actual great gulping breaths through his nose as he walked up to a client. "If you so much as flash fang at him I will stake you, so help me." I said and I meant it.

"It'll be the grimoire," the client said firmly, "I brought it to get it verified, it's wrapped in human skin and written in human blood," he actually sounded proud.

"No," Derek said, "it's pigskin and a mix of," he took another deep breath, "iron filings and red ink, human skin doesn't hold ink for shit, you have to tattoo the victim then peel them, it's not worth the effort, but that's not why." He took another deep breath, "when was the last time you saw a doctor?"

At that the client paled, "I," there were no words.

"Sooner rather than later," Derek continued, "you might still have time." He said as the man got up, patting his pockets to make sure he had his keys before he left at a run.

"So you're a cancer sniffing dog now?" I asked him as I unlocked the door, my office was spartan but comfortable with a couch I had bought with the intention of being able to crash on it, before Finstock had installed the cots in the back, an Ikea desk with a lockable drawer where I kept my work laptop and a few work books. There was a picture of me and my Mom in the gap, and another of me, my dad and Burkhardt at my senior prom. It was one of the very few pictures I had of the three of us. Other than that, and a pathetic plastic plant in the window - a gift from Greenberg who, before his bad luck curse, had lots of spider plants in his office, now he had empty spaces and ring marks on his furniture - and Derek disapproved heartily. He kept giving me things to put in here, throw cushions, a tiffany desk lamp. He always said it was the sort of crap that accumulated over time but I wasn't sure I believed him.

"Never said it was cancer." He answered flopping into the couch, "but that's one appointment you don't need to deal with now, and I answered his question about whether the artifact was genuine. It wasn't, so who's next."

I had to laugh, because otherwise I would have reached into the other drawer in my desk, pulled out my browning and shot him. This was the sort of shit I had to put up with far too often. Instead I threw the paperback on my desk at him. I had become addicted to 1950's pulp novels in Portland, one of the wolves Burkhardt worked with, most animators had a good relationship with the local supers, had adored them and there had always been plenty of them about, Mike Hammer became my ideal PI and I sort of imagined him as my dad.

Derek had probably read them when they were new. "And keep quiet." I told him as I booted up my work laptop.

I had a home laptop and I did keep most of my resources in the cloud, I also had access to the RPIT files as a State Marshall - sort of, in name at least - and the death records of the state because as an animator I needed them. It meant logging in to make sure an animation was viable took forever and i wasn't sure if Greenberg had got a new coffee pot after shattering it this afternoon, so we couldn't just drink coffee whilst it pondered the meaning of the universe or whatever it was that it did that took so very long. "I can't offer you coffee," I told Derek, "Greenberg's bad luck curse is escalating, it's starting to get dangerous and the coffee pot was this afternoon's victim."

Derek pulled out his phone, thumbed out a text and then pocketed it again, before going back to "Kiss me Deadly". I was pretty sure he'd just told his _pomme de sang_ to get us a new coffee machine. This didn't bode well, the last time he'd bought me a coffee machine for my apartment instead of being a $10 effort from Target it was a twenty thousand dollar thing from Italy. Of course he wouldn't take it back, he just shrugged and said "you're my human servant, what's mine is yours." It was his answer for most things. He never asked me to do anything, he just tried to give me stuff.

I didn't begrudge him biting me, or even binding me, it saved us both, and I knew the bonds would last until one of use was dead but I wish he'd stop spending money on me. It made me feel like a trophy wife with a vampiric sugar daddy, and I was better than that. I was one of the best animators in the country and if kept pushing I would kill him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles had an appointment with someone who is not who they are presenting himself. It was, unfortunately, too late to go back to bed, especially as a certain vampire wanted to go with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song Stiles gets in his head is as it says "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads
> 
> you can hear it here =  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX6FsTIq6ls
> 
> if you don't know it you might want to, because a) it's an amazing song, and it makes more sense when you read the chapter  
> Stiles starts hearing the amazing intro.  
> Derek nearly chides him with the lyrics but I figured the song's old, no one would know it but me

The International Death Register was held online for a reason. Animators the world over, although there weren't that many of us world wide, it also meant that RPIT offices could log in, and there were limited licences that could be bought for professional genealogy experts and universities, and some that managed with estate law. Everyone who had a licence and a log in could log in wherever they were, but because it was held online it took ages to load. I had a full licence which meant I could not only see when and where a person died, I could access their social security history and make the decision whether or not they could be animated.

Supernaturals couldn't be reanimated.

At all

Full stop.

Ever.

No that wasn't true, sometimes they could but they never should be. 

At all.

Full Stop.

Ever.

Never ever.

Burkhardt had once, under severe distress and held by some bad people indeed who wanted him to raise a bank robber to find out where he had stashed a large group of diamonds. Instead Burkhardt raised a pair of day sleeping vampires who turned out to be feral and he barely got out with his life. It was possible, but it wasn't a good idea and it required a lot of juice.

Shifters were worse if, and the word was if, you managed to get one out of the ground there was no controlling it and the chances were you were dead anyway, and the last thing you wanted was a rampaging zombie werewolf. I'd seen footage of one from world war 2, because the Nazis had a lot of animators on staff and were determined to bring about something called the Todtencorps, but they were a lot crazy.

So the IDR existed so that we didn't even try.

Animators were a rare breed and the idea of someone like Greenberg dropping trying to raise a shifter without any information was never going to fly, because if I fell then Greenberg would be the only licensed vamp executioner in North California and that was a bad thing. Often vamps self regulated but sometimes the master of the city might unleash someone to alter the politics in the Kiss or a vamp who wasn;t under the control of the master of the city might appear to stir up trouble or try to take over the city, just because the Master of the City appeared to abide by the law didn't mean anything in the scheme of things. So the state had vamp executioners, although sometimes it meant taking down a shifter too.

There were alternatives but the bounty hunters, the old monster hunters, didn't get welcomed into the cities too often, where the animators worked with the supernaturals.

I was waiting on the IDR booting up when Ollie sent in my appointment, a man who was operating under the false name Jean Chastel obviously in the thought I wouldn't recognise it. It didn't matter, I was going to turn him down. I just needed the IDR to say why.

Jean Chastel was in his mid sixties with white hair in a sort of tonsure around his head that was shaped not entirely unlike a bowling ball, he had deep set dark eyes and a sour mouth and when he talked he tended to over enunciate as if talking through a set of badly fitting dentures. He wore an expensive suit that didn't quite fit suggesting a lot of weight loss recently. His story about raising a two hundred year old body over testate claims was clearly bullshit too, but it wasn't my job to ask about those things, it was my job to tell him I wouldn't be able to raise the body, and to show him why.

"Glad you could make it," I said standing up and offering my hand, "please ignore my colleague, he's having issues with his office at the moment." Derek looked up at me and then went back to his book, well my book, as Chastel took a seat.

"I hope you've given my offer some consideration." He said as he adjusted his jacket.

I scratched at my arms through my tee, before I typed in the name he had sent to me as part of the protocol.

"I have, unfortunately I won't be able to comply, although your offer is certainly more than generous it's simply not possible." I turned the monitor towards him, "as you can see the subject is rated red meaning I won't be able to take this job."

"If it's a monetary consideration..." he left it open.

"I'm sorry, I haven't been clear," I said calmly, "you're hearing won't when I meant can't. I can't help you, any monies you have sent to us will be refunded, you paid by cash, didn't you?" I opened the drawer and pulled out a cheque book, I knew for a fact he wouldn't cash it so I could make this offer without Finstock having an aneurysm over the concept of giving money back, mostly I didn't need to. Finstock only gave money to charity for the tax break. It was one of those things that made him such an excellent manager.

"I don't see why it's not possible, I have it on good authority you have raised older bodies in cases like these." Chastel said. I had as well.

"Unfortunately Mister Chastel that is not the problem here, as you can see here," I tapped the screen, glad my ancient laptop didn't have a touch screen, "the subject in question was a registered grey back alpha werewolf. I simply cannot raise him." There was a possibility, a thin hope I could do it, but I sure as hell wasn't going to. "Supernaturals don't answer to animation, part of me would welcome the challenge but attempting it would almost certainly simply kill me and not achieve the goal." Derek was growling, "so I'm respectfully bowing out. There isn't an animator alive that will take this job no matter how much you pay them." I offered him a look i hoped offered condolence, "well, they might take it, but they wouldn't be able to do it."

"I do hope that this won't end any future negotiations between us." Chastel said, getting up, he flicked his eyes to Derek and then back to me."

"I can't imagine why not," I said, "here," I reached into my desk and offered him a business card along with the cheque, "Papa Deaton, sometimes voodoo can achieve what animation can not, but, he might be able to help with your health issues as well, it's certainly something I can't do." Chastel's eyes widened in surprise. "I'm an animator, Mr Chastel, I recognise death in all it's forms, even where it hasn't quite reached it's goal."

Chastel took the cheque and the card and stuffed theme into his jacket pocket before he actually stormed out of the room.

"So you're the cancer sniffing dog now," Derek asked from the couch.

"I never said it was cancer." I told him.

"It was." Derek answered, "of course you know who he was."

"Gerard Argent." I replied, "let me log out of this and we can go to dinner."

"You know he'll be back, he'll do what he can to get what he wants." The Hales and the Argents had centuries of animosity between them, if Derek recognised Gerard Argent then Gerard Argent recognised Derek Hale. It wasn't a huge stretch that he hadn't picked me to do the animation because I was powerful but because I was bonded to Derek Hale. I'd earned enough favours from the main branch of the argent family I had thought they'd leave me alone. I was clearly wrong. 

No, I had to remember, Gerard Argent had been cast out thirty years ago, if he wanted to raise a grey back alpha werewolf, one of a type of werewolf made extinct by their own kind because of it's ferocity, raised as a feral zombie behemoth - I had to let the main branch of the family know. It probably had to do with the cancer. Men like Gerard Argent didn't go down without a fight. 

I wasn't sure if I should tell Morell or not, by the time that she got here Argent would be halfway to Portland, if I turned him down he'd either go to Papa Deaton, and get a faceful of goofer dust for his bother or go after Burkhardt. He wouldn't help him either.

I didn't like Papa Deaton but he never did anything for anyone that didn't help himself, but I had done more than was polite, even Finstock couldn't argue, or at least he wouldn't when he realised that Argent couldn't cash the cheque and it wouldn't cost him the arranging fee which was $500 for both Greenberg and I. Although that was more Greenberg being raised by me, although Finstock argued it was me being pulled down. 

I stretched my arms above my head when I stood up, pushing my arms up as high as I could, and raised my eyebrow when Derek looked across at me, where my tee shirt rode up, and licked his lips. "My belt isn't that attractive." I told him rolling my shoulders, I always got tense when I had to do office stuff with clients. I still didn't know why I couldn't hire someone to do it, it wasn't like we didn't charge enough, especially when I had to tell them to go fuck themselves as I had to with Argent.

"It was that little flash of tummy," Derek told me, "It's soft and plump, just perfect for..."

I didn't find out what it was perfect for because that was when the crash outside the room occurred, sounding like someone had dropped a hundred tin pie trays on a tile floor. It was followed by Finstock shouting "Greenberg!"

Vampiric speed was the reason Derek was at the door before me, he tended to move with slow molasses speed but he moved that fast he stirred the carpet throwing open the door.

Greenberg was covered in files, a laptop, the cups from the counter, all the cutlery and two drawers. I actually wasn't surprised, but judging by the high pitched noise he was making he was hurt. As I looked closer I could see blood spreading across the floor. No wonder Derek had moved so quickly. 

In Portland, when I was growing up, there was a vampire paramedic. He was bloody good at his job, pun not intended, because he could smell things that the others weren't necessarily aware of, they used to share the blood bags that had expired with him, so I really shouldn't have been surprised when Derek took charge. No one could stop bleeding like a vampire when they wanted their meals to last longer.

He jerked his belt out of his pants and had it around Greenberg's thigh by the time that Finstock had started barking orders about calling 911 and trying to find a phone. There was a large piece of crockery sticking out of the side of Greenberg's thigh. I turned away because I didn't want to see Derek licking his hands clean. He was a vampire but that didn't mean I wanted to see him feed. I had seen Derek do that before, and in my head it was always with the baseline from "Psycho killer" by the Talking Heads. "Bad luck hex?" he asked.

I admit it took me a moment to answer, Greenberg was making Loki dying whale noises and Finstock was arguing with the 911 dispatcher. "An escalating bad luck hex and an anti-curse hex." I told him.

"And you didn't think to check with a piskie?" he asked holding Greenberg's leg up and pushing down on his stomach, his hands were bloody and it looked like he was helping him more with yoga than bleeding, he also looked pissed more than hungry. My brain was still playing "Psycho Killer". 

It did, however, say a lot about Derek's control that he wasn't fanged out even if his eyes were starting to go red around the edges. There was a lot of blood.

"They told him to go fuck himself and then laughed." Olly said, "it was the first thing we did, after he broke the first coffee pot." 

I wasn't great with blood that was not my own. You could eviscerate me and I'd stumble to my feet and spit in your face but someone else got a paper cut and I was useless. "I," I started, I was going green, I knew it. I thought I might faint or be sick. There was a lot of blood.

"For crying out loud, Stiles, stop clutching your crucifix and help." Derek said, he was clearly losing his temper, but it wasn't the blood bothering him, that was clear, it was the waste. I mentally made the note that there was a pair of jeans in the back that would fit him, I'd bought them off the internet and they'd delivered the wrong size, but I fell to my knees in the blood and followed Derek's orders although being sick remained an option right up until I was in the showers with Greenberg at the hospital - I felt like I'd been splattered in him, and a good deal of the goo on my jeans was jelly from the donuts - not from Greenberg, Derek had worked so fast he was going to be fine, but right now Derek was naked in the communal showers with me, and my brain was still singing Psycho Killer and I had my eyes screwed shut - he was a vampire and he was old - it didn't matter that he was gorgeous, or how fucking sexy he had looked licking the blood from his palms like it was jelly. I didn't do Vamps, and that was that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles' bad day gets worse and Derek and Lydia meet

06

After Addison V Clarke most supernatural creatures came out of the closet, some of which I was sure would have been more comfortable in Narnia. Beacon Hills had it's own supernatural district and there were times walking through it you could see drag queens walking arm in arm with fauns, teenage "lolitas" walking being shadowed by Sidhe who preferred to prey on sexual predators and it meant that the park in the centre of town might be infested with small children through the day but piskies after dark.

My Mom had told me when I was a kid that bumblebees and butterflies turned into fairies when the sun went down. It was the sort of thing parents told kids even before 1991 when Addison V Clarke happened. It wasn't entirely true, most fairies, as opposed to Sidhe, came out at night because they'd spent centuries hiding and they were just more comfortable in the darkness.

There were lots of "fairies", the sort of small humanoid creatures that the Victorians had illustrated, Piskies, Nixies, Gixies - everyone hated Gixies-; Pooka; Gnomes; Devas and Brownies were the most well known. When most people thought of fairies they thought of Nixies, who appeared female and wore clothes made of flowers and laughed and sprinkled dust. Tinkerbell was a Nixie, and she was a good example of one being a vicious bad tempered little madam. Piskies were slightly larger, being about the size of a Skipper doll, looking like tiny male models wearing animal pelts - well they did before they started robbing Walmarts for doll clothes - which they then adjusted to fit, wore swords, and had wings.

I tried to keep out of the park after dark, Brownies bit, Pooka would rob you and there were Gixies. The last time I went there I got dusted, robbed and my head shaved. Fucking Gixies. I had gone because they had driven a hobgoblin from his tree and I was asked to negotiate. I planted a new tree for the Hobgoblin and considered the couple of hundred dollars for the nursery charges a bargain. There was one time in Portland I woke up in a portable toilet naked apart from a pair of women's shoes (that didn't fit) with a black eye - where they sucker punched me - and pink stripes in my hair. I got arrested trying to get somewhere to get some clothes, and I was fourteen at the time.

I fucking hated Gixies.

I just hoped that having a powerful and dangerous creature of the night with me would stop me needing a fourth change of clothes - but just in case I had some in the car. I knew I should have left that old beanie in the glove box but with April giving way to a warm May I just hadn't needed it.

Fucking Gixies.

The problem was that Piskies could see the streams well enough that they were the absolute best at untangling them. Hit with an unwanted love spell - get a piskie, realtor curses your house, get a piskie, ex girlfriend hexes your cock with flaccidity - get a piskie, and if you were lucky, the piskie would help - for a cost of course.

Mostly though, they'd just roll the floor laughing and let you go on your merry way with a cursed house, an unwanted love spell and a floppy cock.

They were, after all, malicious little fuckers.

So when Greenberg had come back cursing like a children's tv presenter saying the Piskies were a bust it was generally accepted that he had tried and they had turned him down, we didn't know then that it would escalate, it was at that point pens not working for him, there being no cups in the cupboard and it wasn't dangerous. It had escalated and now he was in the hospital after nearly losing a leg to a filing cabinet. Someone needed to deal with the Piskies and Finstock was banned from the park after his attempt, and that left me.

I just hoped Derek would do all the talking.

Of course my life wasn't even close to being that simple, when I had a bad day I had a truly epic Alexander style bad day. So instead of a Piskie nest, which was bad enough, we found a body.

It was entirely flayed and to make things worse, sending us back to the car for blankets, water, salt and my med pack, it wasn't dead.

\---

Morell was not impressed, I tried to explain to her I was having a really shit day but she didn't look too amused by the idea, she just sort of glared and moved her minions about. Parrish, her second in command, was about a hundred yards away vomiting into a bush. You'd think a member of the RPIT would be desensitized but a groaning body without a lick of skin was clearly too much for his stomach.

The corpse was a Naga, I knew that because of the pearl in the hollow of her forehead, I was so glad I'd done my reading because otherwise I might have stood next to Parrish and the bush he was christening. So I slipped into the sort of cold practicality that Burkhardt had instilled in me - deal now, cope later. So I had Derek wrap her into the blankets in the back of the Volvo, soaked them to keep her damp whilst I phoned for an ambulance and gave her a morphine shot.

Normally I wouldn't have given the victim any kind of shot for fear of overdosing them but whilst Naga had their pearls they were immortal, I could have given her the whole bottle and not killed her.

Naga were very rare, and if I'd known there was one in state I would have had Morell warn her, but it looked like Morell didn't know she was there either, it meant that the _peltier_ had information we didn't.

Silverton, one of the lower ranked members of the RPIT, brought me tea, earl grey in a tin camping cup, Derek had sat down on the open boot of the volvo and I hadn't realised when I forced my way between his thighs, I felt shocky now that I had time to actually process what we'd found.

She had been on her belly where she had tried to make her way to a small stream that ran through the park, it wasn't deep, not even half way to someone's ankles, but every instinct in her was taking her there, one of her eyes had gone and two of her teeth were missing and all of her fingers were broken, suggesting it wasn't a clean flaying. She'd fought as hard as she could.

I knew I was shaking but Derek was holding me in place.

Lydia was wearing a standard issue flight suit she had had fitted, the normal size drowned her because she was small, barely five foot three, in white sneakers with the paper baggies over them, and her hair bound up in a knot. "Well, I suppose this is a good excuse as any to get out of dinner with me." She said. Even without make up, she never wore it to crime scenes, well apart from a little mascara and some lip balm, she was beautiful. She had the sort of gravitas that meant that she looked like a goddess even in a black flight suit covered with pockets, with her hair scraped back to cover with the hood on the back, and white paper baggies over her feet.

"I'd rather have had dinner." Derek said over my head.

Derek and Lydia loathed each other from a distance. They had never met, and it didn't surprise me that they'd meet over a body, what surprised me was that the body was still alive - although that was more because Naga were functionally immortal than for any other reason.

She, the Naga, looked like a Rawhead, so I was torn, my instincts were going crazy, there was enough blood here that Derek's fangs were out, and he was lisping some of his words, every part of me said burn it, because Rawheads were awful. I'd only seen one in my life, when Burkhardt had started training me and took me out on what he thought was a milk run and ended up with the two of us in the ER with burns to our hands and me in a shock blanket.

It might be why I was shaking around the tea that Silverton brought me.

Skinned Naga were disturbing but Rawheads were terrifying, I could even now smell it, above the bergamot in the Earl Grey tea and the soft notes in Derek's cologne. I even hated myself for needing comfort.

"Mongolian barbecue is definitely out, and carpaccio." Lydia had an affinity for death, she was surrounded by dead bodies day in and day out, often in much worse states than the Naga. Very little bothered her. The idea of carpaccio made me nauseous at the best of times. I wondered if there was room at the bush for me, as Parrish came back to the scene wiping at his mouth. It was a standard at RPIT everyone had thrown up at a scene at least once, there was even a protocol for it, get as far as you can, there's tea when you're done.

The RPIT van had a bottle of listerine and everyone, myself included, had used it at one point or another.

"Do you have any appointments tonight?" Morell asked me, "because I want to take you off active duty."

"One I can rearrange," I answered, the idea of going home and showering sounded glorious right now, just washing this god awful day away and crawling into my bed, curled around my wicket and turning my phone OFF.

"I can take him back to Totentanz," Derek said, he was resting his chin on the top of my head, "he looks a lot more together than he is right now."

"The appointment you can't rearrange, can Greenberg take it over?" Morell asked. If she was worried about me I must have looked worse than I felt, and I felt like shit.

"Greenberg's in the hospital." Derek said, talking over me, "we were in the woods looking for a Piskie, he's got an escalating bad luck curse."

Morell frowned for a moment. "Jinks!" she shouted. It genuinely might have been the first time I saw her raise her voice at all. She was perfectly equanimous at all times, perfectly turned out in tight black jeans and shirt, the type that were easily covered in the regulation coveralls. Her hair was perfectly straight around her face and her perfect mask of calm didn't look to waver at all. She was the head of RPIT for a reason. The rest of them might have been dregs and supernaturals but Morell was amazing at her job.

I remember my dad saying that a woman had to work twice as hard as a man to be considered half as good in the police department, and Morell, she worked eight times as hard and had earned her position. She had the highest closure rate in the state and she deserved it.

I could have facepalmed if Derek hadn't been wrapped around me and it wouldn't have spilled my tea. RPIT had a resident Piskie, Jinks, who I barely saw because Piskies were day fae and well, animators did most of their work by night.

"Tinks' tits!" the piskie exclaimed, "you look worse than that snake over there that's been used for handbags, you sure you're an animator and not one of the long dead," and that was why I repressed the memory of Jinks, because most of the time I wanted to punch him in his tiny head.

Derek snarled at him from over my head. I'm sure he looked very impressive, the two of us had been stripped down to our underwear by the RPIT and shoved in regulation jumpsuits so they could take our clothes for evidence, Derek's jumpsuit had turned out to be a small so he'd had to tie it off around his waist with the arms and it only came half way down his legs, and there was an old hoodie shoved in the back of my volvo, that needed washed, that had been sacrificed for the cause whilst we waited for his _pomme de sang_ to bring us a much needed change of clothes.

It meant that his scar, a silvered triskelion on the back of his neck, where they had soaked the wood in holy water and pressed it to his back so the skin melted underneath it, had been on display for long enough I felt uncomfortable for him. It was another sign of the bond between us - I felt his discomfort enough that I had snapped at the officers and found the hoodie for him. It didn't fit, and was a hideous one I had picked up in Walmart cheap because it was blue and orange and they were colours that generally didn't match, but it covered the scar and it made me feel more comfortable.

I hated how comfortable I felt, wrapped in his arms, with his head on mine, shivering around my tea, I wasn't going to be sick, I repeated to myself, but I couldn't get the music of Psycho killer out of my head.

Morell would sort out something for the Meng case, possibly call in Krasikeva from Hill Valley to do it, it meant calling Simmonds and letting her know it might be a bit late, and then letting the lawyers know, but right now I was going to go home, let Derek and Lydia snark over my head, and just go home and crawl into a ball until today was over.

I didn't want Derek to look after me, I was capable of looking after myself.


	7. Chapter 7

By the time Krasikeva had arrived the Naga was en route to the hospital and I was tucked up in the back seat of my volvo with a cup of tea. I had always found it amusing that the RPIT van contained the facilities to make tea and flasks of coffee, but there were usually traumatised people about them so I suppose it made sense.

The thing about bodies is that bodies are easy, they're just meat, but it's much much worse when they're still alive, because then they're a person. I could walk into a room straight out of Clive Barker's worst bloodsoaked nightmares and not blink, but a person with a paper cut and I was nauseous. My own intestines could be splattered from here to Portland, I lost my stomach when my dad's thumbnail fell off after he trapped it in the car door.

Bodies are easy.

Even the bodies of people you know.

I was shaking, not quite shivering but not that far off it, and Derek was worried. Boyd, one of his vampires had shown up with clothes and was immediately sent back to get me something warm to wear. Morell was worried I was going into shock, which wasn't that surprising when you thought about it.

But then Krasikeva showed up, looking like a goddess with her pixie cut and bike leathers as she stepped off her Kawasaki Ninja, pulling off her helmet with a grin. She looked like a movie star with this beauty mole just under her left eye, and dark hair with pale skin, and she had a sort of soft shyness to her that very few women I knew managed, especially when they were licensed vamp executioners.

Krasikeva started training the same time I did, the difference was she was nineteen and I was eight, where I trained with Burkhardt, she trained with a shaman in Minnesota, but then spent a probationary year working with Burkhardt in Portland with me. That was the year it happened.

I had the biggest crush on her at the time, she had this long black pony that swung behind her when she walked, and was talking about getting her bike licence, she played the cello and could read latin. She seemed like a goddess to me.

In my head I was always careful to call them Burkhardt and Krasikeva instead of Nick and Paige, and I knew they called me Stilinski, because you never knew who was listening. It meant if anyone forced the name out of me I wouldn't give them the power of knowing they were dear to me. I thought of Krasikeva like a sister, and Burkhardt like another father, but no one knew they could be used against me like that. It was a thing - when you killed vamps for the state the vamps would use anything to get even, so you just couldn't take the risk.

"Hey, pup," she said climbing into the car beside me, "I heard what happened." She reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and handed me a candy bar in a distinctive yellow wrapper, "Butteville?" she asked. At the time I had laughed at the name, I didn't anymore.

"Yeah." We all had flashbacks, it came with the territory, some of mine were just worse because I had been so young. I was just shy of my twelfth birthday when Butteville happened, and that meant the scar ran deep and never quite healed. She just leaned her head against mine and sighed. Krasikeva was the closest thing I had to a sibling, and sometimes that meant she just got it.

She had been the one to find me back then.

She kissed me on the temple, "here's what we're going to do, pup," she said, "I'm going to take your keys and tell Hale I've got you, we're going to go finish that Animation tonight - with you supervising because you're "training me" right," I nodded, "and then I'll drive you home, Hale can get one of his fangs to drop my bike off at your place even if they have to push it there," she didn't even look at him when she said it but I could see his bitchface through the window. "And then you're going to have a long hot salt bath so you feel clean, go to bed and start tomorrow in a better frame of mind, all thoughts of Butteville put back in the vault." And I nodded, "and maybe catch something to eat, I'm starved, I was thinking subway." She had a smile like a soft warm thing, it was nonthreatening, but I knew how dangerous she was - and it was why I felt so reassured she was on my side.

I had been eleven when Butteville happened. Kids started going missing, Burkhardt went out to investigate, Krasikeva was in the first weeks of her probation period, where she was licensed but someone was there, just in case. It seemed pretty cut and dried, the descriptions of the thing made it sound like a wendigo or a rougaru. So plans were made for a wendigo or a rougaru.

It was neither.

It was a type of fae called Rawhead and Bloody Bones. It was one of those no one had believed was real, the Sidhe never spoke of it, I later learned because they never spoke of the lesser fae at all. It was a bogey man that apparently lived in the closets under the stairs and dragged children out of the beds and ate them up for lying.

It was a boogeyman, no more real than any of the other creatures that lived in closets the world over.

Until it was. It dragged me kicking and screaming from my bed in a house full of police officers, two licenced vamp hunters, and three supernatural bounty hunters.

I had spent six days in it's cave with two other kids because it liked the taste of fear in it's meat, and it hated that we were "water fat" it said that as it pinched our skin, it wanted us to die of dehydration because it made the meat best. One of the others died when I was there, and it brought another in, but sat there in front of us, picking out the best parts of the one we watched die, chewing on it's intestines with horrible slapping noises like someone sucking up noodles.

Krasikeva was the one who found me, didn't let go of me all the way to the hospital, and the paramedics had to wrestle my arm free to fit a saline drip.

When you say that it was skinless you have this sort of expectation of an anatomist's dummy, that you can make out the muscles and tendons and bones, this wasn't true. It looked raw, like an open wound, wetly pulsing, and making the most awful sounds as it ate and spoke, splattering spittle that smelled like old meat and rot all over us, it's fingers sharp as talons as it pinched.

It looked like it had been flayed.

It left bloody smears where it touched us and it smelled like death and sickness and dark wet pools that you find in caves.

Vampires bit you and tore into you, you knew where you stood with vampires, things like Rawhead and Bloody Bones were nightmares for a reason.

It was PTSD flashbacks and I knew it, and that's why Krasikeva brought me chocolate.

I broke off a chunk and let it dissolve into my mouth. She knew me well, she had brought me my favourite. It made me wonder how much that Morell had told her. Outside the car, the door was open, Derek made what could only be called a porn noise. "What is that heavenly thing?" he asked, licking his lips. I forgot for a moment he tasted what I tasted - meaning the last hour or so had been shared bile.

"Cadbury's caramel." Krasikeva told him, "want one?" She pulled another three from her pocket, knowing full well that vamps couldn't eat solids. "Oh, pup," she said, "a human servant, really?" Of course she'd recognise it.

"We were both dying at the time." I admitted ruefully, breaking off another of the chunks, they didn't make these things big enough, I thought, but the chocolate and sugar were helping. These candy bars only made an appearance when one of us was feeling shitty. We bought them by the box from an importer because they were worth it, judging by the porn noises that Derek was making he thought so too.

"Only one thing to be done for it," Krasikeva said sagely, "I can take his head if you want."

"Nah," I told her as she leaned forward to take her jacket off, "he's not so bad, if he'd STOP WITH THE EXPENSIVE GIFTS." I deliberately put emphasis on that and Krasikeva laughed. Her arms and neck were covered in tattoos, which she hadn't had the last time that I had seen her. They were a distinctly Asian pattern of a snake that twined through holly bushes and went up under her tank and towards her ear. "Ink? I thought you said you hated mine."

"Oh, that's a story, pup," she said, now that I looked closer the ink looked strange, it didn't have the rough look of a tattoo, it looked more like it was part of her, like a bruise. "You know that famously haunted house in Kansas."

"The one that is supposedly a portal to Hell, the one we swore we'd never go near on a pinky promise."

She sighed, "yeah," she sounded tired, "should have kept that promise. This was the least of what I took out of that place, then we burned it down and salted the earth just to be sure." She stopped, "when I swung my bike around just to make sure, it was back, so a case of fuck that shit, I'd rather rumble with the Vamps down in New Orleans." There hadn't been a licenced vamp hunter in New Orleans ever, the vampires were in control, and had been for as long as Addison vs Clarke, and unofficially before.

"Our lives are fucked up." I told her, leaning her head against mine she just agreed.

"A peltier, in the US, I mean," she said quietly, "what is the world coming to."

"It's all fucked up." Derek said, "Boyd's back." He said and pushed a thick fleece hoodie through the car door for me to put on. I made an affirmative noise and ate another chunk of the chocolate.

\---

The Meng case was almost entirely by the numbers except for one detail, because the Meng sisters came from outside the state it meant I couldn't just rearrange it the way I really really wanted to, there were legal details and issues with lawyers and it was a huge payout, fifty grand for the Animation.

Susie Meng had descended from an Imperial Chinese Handmaiden and had the antiquities to prove it, each of them with immaculate provenance, right up until she died and then the antiquities, featuring a jade and pearl comb that was valued over five million dollars, vanished, with a huge chunk of her family fortune, leaving a pittance to her two daughters.

To make matters worse she had died in the same car accident as her lawyer who had yet to write up the details of where the money and the antiquities went, so there was over fifteen million missing and the only person who knew where it went was dead, so after three years of legal wrangling and accusations, each of the two sisters blaming the other, they had agreed, mandated by a judge in fact, to an animation and it became mine because of the location of the grave, not because I was the best or anything. Well it came down to either me or Greenberg but there was no way that Finstock was letting Greenberg anywhere near a case with a flat fee for fifty grand, most animations were a tenth of that.

Finstock got his commission, fifteen percent, then the rest was mine, well, Krasikeva's for doing the job. I didn't really care, I had plenty of money and right now I wasn't that sure I could stand up. Derek had, begrudgingly left me in Krasikeva's questionable care, so it was just the two of us, which turned out to be a good thing because Kara was on chicken duty tonight.

Kara was a junkie. It meant something else in my line of business, they were bite addicts, people who, for whatever reason, got off on vampires biting them. Peter had tried his best to kill the practise when he took over but the junkies themselves remained, and had I brought Derek it would have been cruel to Kara because Derek wouldn't bite her, and she would want him to.

Before Peter had taken over the city it had been the province of Thackeray, and Thackeray had been amongst the worst of the vampires entire. He had cultivated the junkies and refused to use the protocol of the _pomme de sang_ , instead he picked people at random and fed where he wanted. The warrant for his life had been nearly ten years old because no one had been able to act on it until I had gotten very lucky indeed and Peter became Master of the City. So instead Kara wore her scars under heavy clothes and worked for Finstock taking care of the livestock we needed for the job, but we kept her away from the vamps.

I just sat on the hood of the volvo, still wrapped up in the fleeced hoodie, and drinking hot chocolate Krasikeva had picked up on a swing into Starbucks.

Krasikeva was a good animator, strong and capable, with over ten years experience under her belt and I watched her behead the chicken with my tanto, and raise Susie Meng by name and slice open the pad of her thumb to give the zombie voice. Whatever she said made the two Meng sisters whine and then launch into a physical attack whilst the lawyers were haranguing each other and how both accused the other of it being their fault. Taking salt Krasikeva laid old Susie Meng back into her grave and came over next to me. "Donated the lot to charity." She said sitting down next to me, "gave the antiquities to the Museum of San Francisco, said the two of them were heartless bitches and didn't deserve a dime, left enough in trust for their kids to go to college, state, and told them to go fuck themselves." I sniggered, "Can't argue with that, now it's just up to them to get past blaming the other and job done." She slid off the hood and offered me her hand, "ready to go home, pup."

I agreed.

She left me outside my building which was where Derek had, good to his word, left her bike, kissed me on the forehead and told me to call her in the morning. I agreed readily, because she really was as close to a sister as I had, before I went into the building, still cold and shaky but feeling stronger definitely.

There was a woman outside my door, a blonde bombshell in a black corset and leather jacket, I didn't recognise her. "Animator Stilinski?" she asked.

"I don't take kindly to requests where I live." I told her opening the door, "you need to go through Finstock at Animator's Inc." Or that was what I was saying when she brought the vase down on the back of my head - hard.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles no good, very bad day just won't end

There is a weird trick to my physiogonomy in that my ears wake up before the rest of my body do, which means I could be in he deepest sleep and sing along with the radio in my dreams, but then I slowly come around. I don't know if other people do it, but I do.

So even before I realised what was happening I could hear two men talking over me, I mean, they were literally stood over me, using words like ER and concussion and goddammit Erica and genocide. As I came around I realised who was talking, and that I was laid out on a coffee table with an ice pack to the back of my head and the local Ulfric, Deucalion, arguing with his second over what was to be done about me.

As soon as my head unfogged enough I knew why, even if I wasn't actually awake yet, in that sort of half way place between unconscious and alert. 

"He is Derek's human servant," Deucalion was telling his second, Scott. Scott was young and naive yet, and lacked all the bloodsport that made a wolf strong, but Deucalion favoured him for his own reasons. I sometimes thought I might have something to do with that because before I manifested I would have been in his grade and its possible we would have been friends, but then I checked my ego. deucalion did nothing for only one reason. "If Derek finds out she almost killed him the vampires could wipe us out."

"But it was an accident." Scott was protesting.

"No, Scott, turning around too fast and knocking over a cup is an accident, sending Erica to deliver a polite message is practically an act of war." I tried to process that through the growing throbbing stabbing pain in the back of my head.

"We need to take him to the ER." Scott was protesting, Scott's mother was a human nurse, he trusted human medicine and well, I was human, mostly, like ninety five percent human, maybe more. I was an animator, that suggested a little inhuman. "Concussions can kill. He hasn't woken up."

Deucalion sighed, "use your ears, boy," he said, "he's waking up now."

Deucalion was an Ulfric, a pack leader, but more than that he was the Alpha of the North West which was as close as werewolves got to a king. Even Peter, who had the power to command wolves and make them do his bidding, stepped lightly around Deucalion. He was a consummate statesman and wolves respected strength and bodily power, both of which Deucalion had in spades but was never seen to use.

I remembered Peter and Derek talking about how they couldn't understand why a puppy like Scott was his second, but Deucalion clearly had his reasons, even if he was questioning them right now.

I opened my eyes to look at them, although both were still blurry. One advantage of the human servant thing was I healed faster than a human, not as fast a wolf or vamp, but still faster than the snail's pace I had grown up with. I'd be fine in a day or two. I lurched to the side and was threw up. Maybe a week.

"I'm telling you, Duke, we need to take him to the ER, he'll need brain scans and things."

"I'm good," I protested wiping at my mouth, then I threw up again, before letting out a deep breath, "some water and a mint wouldn't go astray though." I wasn't sure if my voice was slurred but I was pretty sure the vomitting was more a shock thing than a traumatic brain injury thing. My brain wasn't functioning as well as it should so it was an either or thing. My head hurt too much to care.

Deucalion turned his head and looked at one of his wolves who scurried off like he had been the victim of a whip strike. "Don't try to sit up." He said putting his hand on my chest and pushing me back down when I tried. "There's enough vomit for you, even without wolf senses." He looked at another of his minions who went to get a mop, or at least I assumed so. "Erica was vastly overeager and I apologise for that, she is being punished for her actions. She was supposed to simply invite you to discuss the latest murders."

"The peltier." I said bluntly, "it's nothing to do with me, Morell is dealing with it."

"But yet no one sent word that someone determined to kill shifters to me."

"A peltier likes rare shifters," I said doing my best to breathe through the pain in my head, "and sorry, Duke, but wolves are as common as streetlights."

"Three died last week, found skinned just outside Beacon County, but no one bothered to tell me that you were hunting a peltier."

"I didn't know until this evening, and I don't deal with it, it's a human and that's Morell's thing, and you have people in Morell's department, why would I tell you that a Cygne and a Naga were attacked?"

"Because I have a responsibility to protect my people. I am sure that you told Peter Hale."

"I told Jackson Whittemore," I corrected, "who is a Lamia and therefore at high risk."

"But you didn't mention your meeting with Argent."

"I told Argent to go fuck himself," I cut him off, "and refused to do what he wanted no matter how much he offered to pay, I sent him to Deaton knowing Deaton would do the same, he came to me under a false name and I was clearly not supposed to know who he was."

"What did he want?" 

And as wobbly as my head was I told him. "He wanted me to animate a body that the forms revealed to be a grey back Alpha."

Deucalion was not the sort of man easily lost for words, but the way he tilted his head towards me and said "well, fuck me" told me that's exactly what he was. 

I answered something blithe about buying dinner first but they just looked at me as Scott, never one silenced forl ong asked "what's a grey back alpha?"

There were different types of werewolf from the common lupus to the more rare and extinct. Depending on who had bitten them, or whether they were born wolves like Deucalion, altered their transformation. Most bitten wolves, with a very few rare exceptions, could only change into their beta form, a sort of movie monster aberration, there was the lesser face transformation, and they could pop claws independantly. Born werewolves could shift entirely into a wolf, and it was this that defined their genus, ie what kind of wolf they turned into. 

Deucalion was a direwolf, a large black beast the size of a horse that no one in their right mind would go toe to toe with, but there were cave wolves, lumber wolves, timber wolves, even common grey wolves. There had been more, but hunters, and the werewolves themselves, had rooted out the worst of them. There were still differences between loup garou, werevolk and vargr but it was all academic. You were a wolf shifter or you weren't, and that was how they saw it.

The wolves had culled the gray backs because when you heard about a werewolf ransacking a town and eating the children - it was a gray back, a wolf ate your grandmother and then ate the woodcutter - it was a gray back. The last one had died nearly a hundred years before, and it had been good riddance and no one missed them.

They were sliding from history and that's how it should be, when the last grey back died out people thought that the werewolves were gone and that was safer for everyone.

Deucalion told Scott as much as the room spun around me, I was pretty sure I could confirm, it was a concussion. God dammit. I was sure if I didn't move I wouldn't throw up again, but one of the bigger werewolves, Ennis, was doing something to the puddle with coffee grounds so I hoped they knew what they were doing, if the smell of vomit was making me feel ill what must it be doing to the ones with the very sensitive noses.

"I thought I'd phone the Argents when we're both in a similar time zone and let them know that Gerard was sniffing around," I wondered for a second if I could ask for a pillow, my neck hurt, I was pretty sure they could see my brain, but it was my neck that hurt, laid out as I was on a coffee table. "He's their problem."

Deucalion snarled, he didn't like any of the Argents, even the good ones, well the better ones. There was a good reason, I was licenced by the state, if I performed an execution there had been due process, if the Argents performed it it was because they were paid to.

I felt kinda drunk so maybe the concussion was worse than I had thought, "I think I need the emergency room." I think I said but Deucalion just talked over me as he gave orders to his minions. I had a momentary thought of Duke's werewolves as the little yellow creatures from Despicable me and then I was laughing, and Duke was pushing me down again warning me that I would be sick.

"I called my mom." Scott pointed out, "she's a nurse, she'll tell you if you need the ER."

"We can't take you to the ER, Stiles," Deucalion said quietly, "it would be war, you know that."

THe funny thing was when my head wasn't full of cotton wool I did know that. Derek would take it as an insult that they had put his human servant, and I hated that term with the fire of a thousand suns, in the hospital. The vampires would slaughter the werewolves in reaction, and although there might be five to one wolves to vamps in the city, there were at most two hundred vamps, the wolves wouldn't stand a chance, and they knew it.

"It would be a slaughter." I corrected him.

"Six of one." Deucalion said with a shrug. "This was not my intention, and believe me, Erica has been punished for what she did, she was meant to ask you to come here, not nearly kill you." 

"Dunno why you wanted me, just kill things." He said, "only good for dead folk."

Deucalion made a muffled sound that might have been laughter, it sounded self deprecating but it was a reference and Deucalion clearly got it, that meant we might be good for movie nights. Derek hated movies. I stopped myself, I didn't need Derek to socialise, stupid bond.

"I thought you'd have some more information." Deuclaion said, "and unlike Morell you can talk about an ongoing case, tell me if I need to put out patrols, that sort of thing."

"Has to be a peltier." I answered, "who else would take the skins? but why wolves? they're not," the room was still spinning, "they're not rare."

"He didn't just take their skins, Stiles, he took body parts too."

I hadn't known that and even without a concussion I would have goggled at him. "Shit." I said bluntly, becausei t was clear now, why someone was taking the skins, the skin of a naga, the wings of a cygne. "It's a fucking necromancer."

A necromancer was not the same as an animator, an animator partially raised the dead but needed the best part of the body, well brain, to do so, it was almost an illusion, we gave them a part of our energy combined with the energy of whatever we had sacrificed to do the animation, and they were almost exactly like their original selves, sometimes the magic was strong enough that they looked like they had before they died too. They had access to all their original memories, however a necromancer animated the flesh not the mind.

A necromancer could raise a stitched together abomination and an animator couldn't, but an animator could raise a functioning corpse who was exactly like they had been in life and a necromancer couldn't. Necromancy was illegal in forty states and California was one of them.

I tried to get up, "I have to tell Morell, I have to,"

Deucalion kept his hand on my chest, "stay down, Stiles, we dont' want to clean up more vomit. Scott," he turned his head, "call Morell, tell her what Stiles said," Scott nodded, werewolves were better than vampires, I thought, they could use the phone. I was getting the idea that my brains might have been dribbling out of my ear and I really wanted lo mein.

"Stiles," Deucalion said leaning over me, "eyes open." I hadn't even realised I'd closed them.

"Call Derek," I told him, I really wanted Derek, which again suggested the idea that my brains were shot, I never wanted Derek except when he was there, "I'll tell him I fell."

"He's on his way," Deucalion said softly, "but I want you to stay awake until Melissa gets hear." I heard one of the other wolves, Scott maybe, or Ennis, say humans are so fragile, but I wasn't human, not any more. I was a human servant and I wanted my sire.


	9. Chapter 9

I woke up sandwiched between Malia and Liam in Derek's quarters under Totentanz. My head hurt but I didn't feel like it was about to fall out of my eyes the way I had before. Melissa McCall had been wary about giving me over to Derek, not because she was scared he'd eat me - she'd taken one look at him and went "oh my" in a rather breathless fashion, but because she wasn't sure I didn't need an MRI. Derek looked into my eyes and was content with what he saw before he picked me up princess style and took me to Totentanz.

Derek can't drive so I don't know who was driving the car, just that it was a very old car with a lot of room in the back, and he had me in his arms all the way to Totentanz, with a fur wrapped around me.

I hated feeling like a damsel but at the time my head hurt, dammit, and I clung to him like a baby koala because I was hurt and I felt sick and the bond between us was wide open. I could feel Derek's worry and the satisfaction that I was healing so fast. I think, but can't be sure that he kissed my forehead. Derek wasn't much taller than me, although he was more broad, I had been a gangly youth who turned into a lithe man, and there was always the hope, and I kept my fingers crossed, I'd broaden out with age, although if I took Derek up on his offer and finished the bond between us I wouldn't age at all. There were many who would have killed to be in the same position I was, but Derek had simply put me to bed, into his bed, and brushed my hair from my face and told me to sleep. 

So I woke up around nightfall with Malia and Liam on either side of me.

Malia and Liam were werewolves, both of them, but given a sort of extra preference in Totentanz because of who they were, not what. Thackeray had considered himself something of a scientist and he wanted a vampire-werewolf hybrid and had made several different attempts over the year, and Malia and Liam were simply the survivors of one of those attempts. They were, apparently, Peter's children. It was probably not true.

Vampires weren't strictly sterile, but most might as well have been, Peter included. 

Those that weren't ran the risk of infecting the baby with Vlad's syndrome, which was fatal.

Vampires didn't have enough blood in their bodies to get erections unless they had just fed, which was one of the big reasons that feeding and sex were so entwined, but new vampires often still had enough life left in them to produce semen. It didn't last long, certainly no longer than a decade, but vampires got stronger with age, and when Thackeray was experimenting Peter was perhaps four hundred years old. The werewolves, an unwilling pair of women who Deucalion had later spirited away to another pack where she was happier, and he had given the babies to his pack to raise, but Peter sort of treated them like they were his own, even if they weren't, no one was sure, and DNA tests didn't really work with a hundreds of years old vampire. Liam sort of looked like Peter though, with wide blue eyes and a mouth that was similar, Malia on the other hand did not.

I always got the impression that if she wasn't watched you'd find Malia chewing on your shins because it had the best bones. She was among the most animalistic werewolves I had ever met and I worked with them for a living.

I got up, and found Derek had planned ahead, there was cold bacon and orange juice, the breakfast of champions, but I wondered what he had threatened the twins with, they had different mothers but everyone called them the twins, that they hadn't touched it. I stuffed about six slices of the bacon in my mouth washing it down with the orange juice. Say one thing for vampires, they knew what to feed you for bloodloss. I think I ate an entire pound of bacon and at least a litre of juice before I was done, wiping my greasy lips with the back of my hand before I burped. Animators tend to eat a lot, raising the dead burned a lot of calories, and with the running for your life thing we could pack it away.

i knew that neither of the twins was Derek's pomme de sang, so I wasn't quite sure why they were there. There was the old myth about packs sleeping together with an injured member to promote healing but Derek wasn't nearly stupid enough to believe it was true, was he?

I took off the clothes I was wearing, the ones that Boyd had brought me the night before after I found the Naga, and were now spoiled with blood, although this time it was mine. My head felt fine and it wasn't even tender to the touch. I bagged the hoodie, but figured the jeans, which were from walmart, could survive a good wash as they only had a little blood on them. If you asked an animator what was his primary skill, it was getting blood out of fabric. Soaking overnight in cold water with a little baking soda might even salvage the hoodie, but it was ugly and I didn't care if it died.

There were clothes over the back of the chair but I wanted to use Derek's shower and the twins were watching me like I was meat, I was wondering if it was because I ate the bacon. 

Derek used an expensive shower gel, which struck me as odd for a creature who didn't sweat but perhaps he just liked to smell nice, when I popped open the bottle it smelled of leather and honey and sandalwood and all the things that he smelt of that made me feel safe, so I just shrugged and used a lot of it. When I got out of the shower I found the deodorant I preferred sitting on the counter by the sink. It must have been for me because it was still sealed and the only other found in his medicine cabinet - of course I looked - was a half used tin of Sure for women - maybe it was Malia's.

I had a momentary thought that perhaps Derek was sleeping with Malia, and I really didn't like the flavour it brought to my mouth, and I certainly didn't want to consider that it was jealousy. Derek was fine to sleep with who ever he liked, he was a lust vampire, he had to sleep with someone or his magic would drive him mad. I was sure the issue was that it was Malia as she had always been a little feral.

It was something to consider as I shaved.

I dressed quickly, pulling on my docs and lacing them tightly, it gave me a measure of control, which wasn't something to be sneered at in a vampire's nest.

I bounced a quick text to Lydia warning her it might be a necromancer, because of her affinity for death being like a beacon for every freak show in the US, and then another one to Morell with my suspicions and that I'd be in as soon as I could, but I was stuck in Totentanz for the time being because of vampire-werewolf politics. I hoped she could hear my sigh through the text. I really wasn't in the mood for all the posturing bullshit that happened with the city's master and ulfric got in the same room. They were generally seconds away from pulling out the rulers.

When that wasn't happening they were hate flirting and that was worse.

I knew the way to Peter's conference room so I didn't bother paying much attention to what was going on around me, it was barely dark so a lot of the older vamps were waking up, wandering blearily about holding coffee cups and looking confused. It looked exactly like a college dorm at about the same time of day, just with dishevelled designer clothes instead of jeans and graphic tees.

Peter, of course, looked like he'd stepped off the centrefold of Vogue Homme, and Jackson wasn't much different. There was a tray of gourmet chocolates sat in front of him, and two perfectly coloured cups of tea. There was no sign of Deucalion. "Ah, you're awake, my nephew was quite worried about you, he carried you in, simply covered in blood, he didn't know whether to call a doctor or lick you."

I managed to suppress my shudder. "Have some chocolate, I got it especially for you, must keep your sugar up."

I liked chocolate, all animators had to learn to like it or pass out a lot, it was good for stress, shock, blood loss and even the good old "dear god what is that thing" reaction that we all had occasionally. I picked up one of the bonbons, and it was a smooth and creamy butter truffle, my absolute favourite, and I didn't like that Peter knew that.

I didn't make a moaning noise, I didn't.

The bonbons were that good though.

"So," Peter said leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs, holding his cup and saucer with a supernatural grace that I couldn't even hope to emulate, "I understand you have something to tell me."

"I'm not getting involved in a pissing contest between you and the wolves." I told him.

"Oh that little detail, I was assured it was an accident and that Deucalion has taken care of, unlike those of the vampiric persuasion puppies can be photographed," he leaned forward and moved the tray of candy to reveal a few polaroid pictures of what I assumed to be Erica, I didn't really remember her from our brief encounter but she was strung up by her wrists in the "cage". 

The cage was a silver lined cage about five foot by seven foot, long and narrow, where each cross of the metal was fixed with a short silver lined thorn. It meant whenever Erica, who was too short to reach the bottom, moved the thorns cut her open, and being silver it took her longer to heal. Werewolves healed so quickly and could shrug off such monumental pain that simple punishments were irrelevant to them. She was blindfolded and gagged and the only light was front the polaroid camera's flash. I suddenly felt sick, so I took another large mouthful of the tea.

"No, I wanted to talk to you about the possibility that the little problem in my territory is not in fact a peltier, upon whom I've instigated a kill on sight policy, something I'm sure our dear Detective Morell will overlook in the name of the greater good and the smaller bodycount, but instead a necromancer." His smile was an oily thing amidst his perfectly groomed goatee, his hair slicked back. He looked like the CEO of a multinational company in a perfect Varvatos suit with his alligator shoes, and my stomach felt like lead. "You must of course treat me like an idiot, despite my rather prodigious vintage I have never run across one."

I took a deep breath, finished my tea and put the cup and saucer back on the table, they rattled as I did it I was shaking that badly.

"There are three types of reanimation." I said, as if lecturing, "there is basic animation which I do, where I use a combination of my own blood and death to put a facsimile of life back into a corpse, that corpse, although under my control by letting it drink my own blood, is basically a puppet with all the information that they had in life. They are stronger than they were, and do not feel pain, but ultimately are just a meat puppet, just one with the illusion of freedom."

I had to let my hands steady before I continued. "There is voodoo which allows the practitioner to raise the body for much longer than animation but with no mental acuity, they are slaves, preserved corpses are most common. They are loyal to their creator but the practitioner gains their power from Loa and it requires much more sacrifice. They are literal puppets, and are only capable of simple tasks, and if not taken care of they will collapse into parts. 

"However like an animator they can only raise a body of parts from the same body. A strong voodoo practitioner like Papa Deaton can have an army of zombies that are capable of motion, or attack. But a necromancer."

I stopped, "A necromancer can raise any dead tissue, but only one at a time, he can build horrendous amalgams of corpses. You saw the totem pole in that episode of Hannibal?" I asked Peter. He nodded. "Imagine that coming to life and shambling towards you, because that sort of thing, it exists only to kill, and to savage. Imagine that rampaging through a mall, shrugging off everything because it's already dead." 

"How many dead do we know of, three wolves, a cygnet and a naga? So imagine those three wolves stitched together with the cygnet's wings and the naga's impenetrable skin."

Peter swore under his breath.

"And that's the bodies we know of. Am I excused Peter, I've got a lot to do if I'm going to catch this bastard."

"What makes you think you can?" His voice was calm.

"I control the dead," I flexed my fingers, "he is using magic and stolen power to create an abomination, it's my nature, who do you think of us will win?" I didn't mention the power boost I got from my half bond with Derek, Peter didn't need to know about that.


	10. Chapter 10

10

Following the death of her mother Allison Argent became head of the Argent Family, and for the most part she kept them under control, but her grandfather rejected her control and was now considered persona non grata in supernatural circles. Monsters wanted to eat him, and those that hunted the monsters were prepared to let them.

I had left Totentanz and went straight to Morell's office to set up a skype date with Allison, her text told me it was going to be at least an hour but to keep the window open and she'd be ready as soon as she could. I took the time to actually do my job. I ran a search for all the supernaturals in the state that died under suspicious circumstances, so I could be more specific in what had been attacked. I was still waiting on it coming through, because the loose parameters meant a lot to wade through, when Allison pinged me.

Allison Argent did not look like a supernatural bounty hunter, she looked like a super model who preferred to wear practical clothes, with long black curly hair, shining black eyes and a smile like Christmas morning. There was a small scar over her left eyebrow but other than that she seemed to wear none of the scars of her work on her face. That was mostly because when she hunted she wore a mask like that of the Winter Soldier to both protect her and to make sure she didn't show up on surveillance.

She saved me once, near the Canadian border, and concussed I had thought her a ninja. That was our first meeting. The second time I saved her, and since then we had a healthy work relationship, in that we traded weapons and horror stories, and more than once had met up for the sole purpose of getting very very drunk. 

I liked Allison, she was smart, dangerous and knew when to bring the big guns. She was the sort of girl who kept a rocket launcher about her apartment for personal protection. If you needed a weapon that you couldn't get legally, even with the licences I had, you went to the Argents. If they cleared you for it, if, and they often did not, then you were considered one of their inner circle of monster hunters.

The Argents had been hunting monsters since the middle ages, selling weapons to fund it long before the monsters came out of the dark and into the legal light, but Allison was among the best in the world at her game. She was also incredibly expensive.

"Hey, Ally-cat," I said.

"Stiles," she chided, Allison knew if I'd texted her asking for a skype date sooner rather than later, that something was up, and knowing how my luck went the shit had hit the fan. Allison had helped in the Talos clean up, she knew how badly the shit hit the fan when I asked for help. "Are you going to tell me or am I going to drive out to Beacon Hills with the trunk."

The trunk was Allison's work box, I had a tool box, she had a trunk, mine wasn't worth stealing - hers could start a war giving both sides weapons.

"Your grandfather came to see me." I told her, I didn't lie to Allison, I made a point of it, you never knew when a lie was going to blow up in your face especially if you needed someone to watch your back at any point.

"And what did he want?" her voice slipped from bouncy and happy to sounding like a knife edge on a whetstone.

"Me to animate one of the last grayback alphas, seemed to think that under a false name I wouldn't recognise him or I wouldn't run the searches on the corpse if he paid me enough." 

Allison had a tic, when she was pissed she canted her jaw so it was just a little crooked and sucked on her tongue. "Should have shot the son of a bitch when I had the chance."

"We don't kill humans, Ally," I said, and I was just as pissed at that little coda as she was. "Ever wish we weren't quite quick enough for people like him?"

"Once or twice." She agreed. The truth was we had let the monsters kill someone like Gerard before, Allison's own aunt who had stopped hunting the illegal ones for money and started using it like a big game hunt, we didn't stop her from going after Talos even though we knew she'd end up dead, and we didn't back her up. Kate wouldn't have wanted back up anyway. She had instead played into his hands, gathering her little coterie of creatures to kill in her perfectly designed death maze, he had ripped out her throat and taken it for himself.

The vast majority of the horrors he had wreaked had been possible because of her, and although no one had the proof everyone knew that Gerard had funded her and helped her and probably hunted with her. Hell, he had probably taught her everything, Allison's father, Chris, called Kate Daddy's blunt little instrument and I'd never known anyone who disagreed with that rather apt decision.

When he heard she died Peter Hale had offered a million dollars to whoever brought him her skull. He had given Daehler another three million to verify the ones brought to him, most of which were pilfered from medical displays and more than a few of which were plastic.

I had thrown it across the floor and told him to give the money to charity. He had, he'd even given me a receipt.

If I had have mentioned to Peter that Gerard was in Beacon Hills he would have burned him out, no matter how many people, supernatural or otherwise, got caught in the way. At least Deucalion would be relatively subtle in his destruction of him.

"Now why would dear grandfather want an animated Grayback Alpha?" She asked me.

I was honest when I answered her. "There appears to be a necromancer in town, it might be entirely to remove me from the equation," I wasn't over estimating my own abilities. A necromancer sacrificed and paid for the abilities I had naturally, Greenberg could take control over a necromantic abomination because we were animators, it's what we did, not what we chose to become. "Hopkirk is still in bed with the FBI, Greenberg is in hospital, that leaves me, if I was stupid enough to raise a grayback it would rip me to shreds and rampage. The following fall out would put human lycanthrope relations back before Willson vs Rowe. It wouldn't matter that the thing was an animation that dropped with the sunrise, it's in Beacon Hills central, it would possibly swipe though the hospital, kid's ward, and it would be open season on werewolves, which would suit your grandfather just fine."

"Fuck," Allison wasn't one to mince words. "I'll be there by tomorrow. You take care of the necromancer and I'll take care of my grandfather."

"I'll have to tell Peter that you're on his territory."

Allison frowned, Peter had a standing bounty on Argents in his territory after what happened with Kate and Derek, he had been her prisoner when Talos killed her, it was how he ended up holding both of us prisoner and fucked over enough that he made me his human servant - so we could both survive. "Do what you need to, I'll be on the first plane out, tell him that I'm coming to reign in my grandfather and ask him if the bounty's still good."

"I'm at the police station." I told her, hoping she'd take the hint.

"I asked about the bounty," she said, "it means Peter wants him dead and I'm happy to drop him on his doorstep."

"He's close to death." 

"Peter?" she was surprised, I'm not surprised, she was wrong.

"No, Gerard, when he came to see me, I could have taken control of him he was close enough, Derek was there, he said it was cancer."

"That'll be why then," Allison answered, "if he's desperate he'll be much harder to corral."

"If the master of the city and the ulfric want him dead will you stay where you are?" It's not that I didn't want her here, because I adored Allison, she was fun and had all the best toys.

"But Stiles," she said, "I haven't seen you in so long, can't I come and see my favourite animator."

"I'd love to see you, Ally-cat, but the last time you were here you staked one of Peter's favourite for trying to roll you, fucked the Ulfric's second and got yourself arrested for public intoxication."

"It's always a good night when no one dies." She beamed at him. "I'll call you when I land, Stiles." With that she signed off and I resisted the urge to hit my head on the desk. Allison was a bad ass if you gave her a problem, she solved it, even when it was better that someone else did.

 

I didn't have an office at the station, I had desk access in one of the offices, which meant I wasn't quite expecting it when Parrish, Morell's second in command, popped his head around the door. "You're not meant to be in today." He told me.

"I'm good, my head's fine." I told him, still scrolling through the searches.

"What happened to your head, I was talking about the massive case of shock you had going last night."

I grinned at him, "I'm an animator," I told him bluntly, "we cope now, deal with a spectacular breakdown later."

"You're going home." He had his keys in his hand to drive me.

"No, I'm going to stay here and scroll through the odd supernatural deaths in the state and try to find a pattern." I answered, "because if it's a necromancer I'm the only one who can stop it."

Parrish didn't look like a bad-ass, I tangled with wolves and vamps on a nightly basis, I went up against demons, once but it counted, and whatever the fuck Talos had been, I had put rogue hunters out of commission, and was one of the few licensed vamp hunters for the state, and yet I didn't want to tangle with him. He wasn't human, I knew that, but that didn't mean I had a clue what he was. As a rule I tried not to tangle with things unknown, mostly because I never knew how to kill them. Shooting them in the head always seemed like the best option, but you never knew if it was going to put them down or just piss them off.

"One of us can do that and give you the information tomorrow night, and call you out if we need you in the interim, you're no good to us, Stiles, if you bug out."

He had a point, I might not have liked it, but he had a point, it could have been an epic argument, a for the ages grudge match except Morell came in. "Parrish, Stiles, I need you both, we've got a fire in Hill Valley, they've called us in for reinforcements." Hill Valley didn't have a lot of supernatural occurrences, it was a null town, no one was there except for a few minor level shifters. It didn't even have it's own RPIT because it didn't need one, nothing happened in Hill Valley. I had considered moving there multiple times but it would have just meant a commute. "Seems some bright spark vamp tried to start a Church of Eternal Life there."

"So Peter burned it down?" I asked, going back to scrolling through the mysterious deaths.

"The fire was set early this afternoon." It wasn't Peter then, I knew, there were enough vampire hate groups and the church of eternal life was always the first target because it wasn't affiliated with the Council because they refused to use a blood oath to hold the vamps in place. It meant they were wild and untrustworthy, because someone like Peter could be trusted to keep the peace whilst it suited him, and he would maintain the law for his chattel, with no lord there was no order. 

The bullpen was a hive of activity, the usual talk as Morell mobilised the troops, but I admit i wanted to duck into a cupboard when Derek appeared at the door. "You and I have to talk." He said crossing his arms across his chest. I knew why of course, I had snuck out before he had a chance to saddle me with a bodyguard. He worried about me, possibly because I was his human servant.

"Can't talk," I told him strapping a holster to my thigh, my tanto went on the left, and my Browning 9mm went on the right. I put a combat knife on my forearm and pulled a jacket over it. "There's a fire, vamps on fire, in Hill Valley."

"Great," his grin was all teeth, a deliberate thing vampires did so that they could remind you that they bit, "we can talk on the drive."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm attempting Nano so there will be no more updates until December at the earliest, just a heads up  
> you can join me on tumblr at athenadark.tumblr.com


	11. Chapter 11

11

Derek was not a good person to share a car with, especially when he was in a snit. He was silent, belted in because I insisted on it, with his arms crossed and a scowl staring ahead at the road. I knew he was pissed at me, but I had a job to do, and I wasn't going to wait around on his majesty getting his head out of his ass so I could do it. I didn't even dare put on the radio, let alone ask him to do something practical, like load bolts into the magazine for my wrist-bow. I had all sorts of new weapons to the animation trade, including a paintball gun that I used for holy water and colloidal silver, and a wrist bow that fired off wooden bolts.

I didn't know that the fire at the Church of Eternal Life was going to require them but with my luck.... well it was better to arm for bear and find guinea pigs than arm for guinea pigs and find bear as Burkhardt so eloquently put it.

Hill Valley was a nothing town even by Beacon Hills standards, it had a sign with a population on it that it kept up to date. Nothing happened in Hill Valley, even the vampires avoided Hill Valley because there was no one there but old people complaining about everything. So the idea that someone would build a Church of Eternal Life there was the sort of ludicrous that slipped under the radar. Hill Valley didn't even have a Walmart.

The Church had been set up in an old skating rink, the recession hit California hard and the vamps, who had had centuries to build up money, had bought a lot of property. There wasn't a lot on the outside that would reveal it's purpose but the corralled wild vamps were a good clue that all was not as it seemed.

Derek got out of the car prepared for violence, the building was burning nicely and the firefighters were dealing with that, but the RPIT were trying to deal with three vamps who were new, none of them were older than a year, and freaked out. Older vamps forgot pain, pain was strange like that, as soon as it was gone you forgot how it felt, and old vamps had gone a long time without pain so they didn't care, there was debate that they could feel it, but new vamps balked at things that wouldn't have hurt them regardless because they were still human enough to remember pain. So to control them, because they were mostly feral with fear, the shock of being awoken, being new etc, the RPIT had laid down a line of fire on the sidewalk.

"I smell blood." Derek said and then lounged against the car because that's how people react to those sorts of pronouncements.

"There you are," the local deputy said, I didn't recognise him, I didn't deal enough with Hill Valley to know his name. Nothing happened in Hill Valley. It's why building a Church of Eternal Life there was a reasonably good idea, no one would think of one being there. There was more likely to be one on the moon. "We were waiting for you?"

"What's the situation?" I asked, I wasn't sure if I needed to be armed, but I got the impression I would be.

He looked at me as if wondering exactly how much I was supposed to know. I'm officially federal instead of state and that never went well, but as a rule I only dealt with dead things. "It took a while to get them coralled, and they went for Marquez."

"How went for?" the problem with local versus federal was how far each of them could piss, it was a stupid thing, I didn't care for their credit and whatever, my job was to make sure dangerous vamps were taken out. I'd much rather actually do my actual job, it was a whole lot less dangerous, and for some reason people didn't hold information back.

"There you are," Morell interrupted us. "How prepared are you?"

"How prepared do I need to be?" I went around to the back of my volvo, and popped the trunk.

"I have one deputy en route to Memorial," Memorial was the local hospital, "two of the vamps have reacted more with flight than fight but the one with the black perm went for an officer, he's going to lose his arm." 

You can't be sentimental, you can't say oh well, the vamp was scared, his nest was on fire, the officer was in the wrong place. You can't offer mercy. If the vamps had belonged to Peter he could have offered punishment in my place, he could have taken him and offered weregild to the officer. There was no idea who had started this Church of Eternal Life and turned them, there was no paperwork filed or Morell would have told me, so the only thing I could do for Marquez was simple, I had to put down the vamp who bit him.

I didn't bother with the wrist bow. It was too small for anything but suppression, vamps can take a lot of damage. Derek was texting, I just hoped he was texting Peter. If Peter was prepared to claim the other two they were getting out of this alive. Unlicenced vamps were an instant death sentence if the local Master of the City didn't take them. It was the law. From the wheel well of the volvo I took the heavy crossbow. I had guns if I needed them, for when I expected a fight, but for this kind of execution the crossbow was best, if you got the opportunity to snipe it could take down a vamp in a single shot. It had been a gift from Allison.

You can't be sentimental in this part of the job. It's easy to kill them when you're in the heat of battle, when it's kill or be killed, but like this it sucks. There's no other word for it, it sucks.

"Do you want me to do this?" Derek asked me.

I might have wanted him to but the answer was clear, there was only one thing I could say to it. "I have to," I lined up the cross bow. The vamp was young, even as a human, barely into his twenties, reasonably attractive, although the black perm was a mistake. Not quite a kid, but not much more. It's funny how quickly they seem to be younger than you. I didn't say anything, I just pulled the trigger and he went down. After that I took a fire axe from the trunk, when I say I plan for war I really do. As an animator I wouldn't have to worry about a zombie invasion, well unless I wanted to become an evil overlord, but you wouldn't have thought it from my trunk.

I stepped across the fire, with the other two baby vamps hissing at me but making no move to attack. I put my foot on the chest of the vamp i had shot, and then using the axe I took his head off.

You can't romanticise these things, you just do them.

The vampires actually backed off, cowering, stopping with the hissing. Even apex predators will back down from something that picks them off that easily.

I could hear the deputies cursing, because they weren't really prepared for this sort of thing, and Derek was texting, or playing farmville on his phone or something, because he'd seen me do much worse and nothing bothered him.

"Peter taking the noobs?" I asked, flicking the grue off my axe, I had to play at being cool at these things, but I really really wasn't.

"Yeah, he's on his way." Derek said, without looking up from his phone. "Any idea who did this?"

"Not a clue." I jumped up unto the hood of the volvo, sat next to him. The RPIT would have it from here.

\---

Deputy Griffiths came over to us after a while as everyone tried to sort out the cluster fuck of the fire, sometimes it happened that the cops were tired and with nothing else to do except monitor the scene they bothered me. Often they're there because they need to be, but at the same time there was nothing for them to do, the fire was under control, the RPIT was dealing with the two vamps I didn't have to put down, although I suspected Derek's presence had a lot to do with that. "What you did," Griffiths said, "it was cold."

It was, that wasn't the thing I had to worry about, I'd be called worse. "You ever been bitten, Griffiths?" I asked him. "By a dog, maybe."

Griffiths shook his head, I don't think he really expected me to have an answer, because it wasnt' about me having an answer, it was about him being scared and nervous and needing to take it out on someone and I was the least dangerous thing here, or so he thought. 

"Imagine it was a dog that came out of that fire, scared, disoriented, with all the lights and the noise and the chaos and Marquez crossed his path, what would it do?" I knew the answer, so did Griffiths, even the best behaved dog would lash out to protect himself, and the outcome would be the same. "and what would you do? If that dog damn near ripped Marquez's arm off, because it was panicked." I rolled my shoulders, "you have to stop looking at them like people, Griffiths, because they're not old enough to have any control when they're shocked awake, they're like feral animals and sometimes they need to be put down."

"You're sat next to one of them, how can you think of them like animals?"

Derek bared his fangs and hissed at him.

"The old ones," I told Griffiths, "they have more control, and the ones controlled by the old ones, had he been bound to the Master of the City it would have been his call, he might have saved him after a punishment, but he didn't have that protection because some asshole vamp set up a Church of Eternal Life where it's not licensed or approved by either the state or the Vamp Council. So he's just a hurt dog, scared and lashing out and the only difference is he was person shaped. So maybe it's cold, but vamp bites aren't pretty, they're not two little pin pricks, it's like a shark bite, and the vamp then has power over him, if he rolled him close enough to bite, any time he got hungry he'd do it all over again, so Marquez' bite is being washed in holy water," beside me Derek winced, "which burns on a vamp bite, burns so much the water boils, so yeah, maybe I'm cold about it, but in my line of work, which is something I didn't choose, by the way, but was born with, you kind of have to be."

Griffiths didn't say anything to that, he was cut off by the arrival of a white limo. It wasn't Peter, Peter was often vocal in his distaste of white limos ever since the company sent him one by mistake nearly three years before, he said it was only pimps and drug dealers that had white limos and Peter might have eaten the driver had one come for him - but he had been, the last I'd heard him talk about it he was talking about getting one of his own. Unlike Derek who couldn't drive, he wouldn't drive, it was beneath him.

So whoever was in the white limo it was unlikely it was Peter.

The vampire that emerged was not Peter, she was much much more dangerous than Peter, it was one of the Vampire Council of North America, it was, wearing white fur, with long white hair and skin like porcelain, Lady Winter.


	12. Chapter 12

Lady Winter was old. She wasn't old in the way people were old, like Christopher Lee or Cloris Leachman, or even in the way buildings were old, but mountains and ravines and rivers. That was what I would take away from this, that she was as dangerous and implacable as a mountain pass.

I had gone straight back to the Annex after I had talked to her, pretending my hands weren't shaking. I wasn't sure if it was my gut wrenching terror or Derek's through the bond I was feeling.

I both wanted chili and to be sick. It was that kind of meeting.

People talk about vamps and most of what they meet are twenty, thirty years old, if they meet a master they’re usually no more than two hundred. Gerik had been the oldest I had ever met and he was two thousand, and in comparison to Lady Winter he felt like a child.

I could feel the death on things. It was part of what I was. All I could tell about Lady Winter was that she was old and when she spoke it felt like the wind across the artic, sharp and relentless. It had that sort of bleak feeling of eternity. She was absolute and I never wanted to meet her again.

Lady Winter was one of the vampire council, the oldest and most ruthless of the vampires, the ones that existed as long as any one could remember, those whom the other vampires spawned from. Peter was the Sourdre de Sang of the city (and three counties) and he was powerful, but the Council were the ones who gave life to the Masters of the City worldwide, and she was in Beacon Hills. I wasn’t going to have a panic attack, I didn’t have the time.

She had invited us into the back of her white limo where she was sprawled across her arm chair, the one facing the mini fridge, in a white silk pantsuit with a fur stole pulled around her shoulders, putting paid any lingering fantasies I had of Emma frost kicking around in my head.

“We have a mutuality of purpose" she said in one of those English accents that only belonged to movie villains and didn't actually exist in real life. She was dressed like a CEO and sitting a white limo and every part of me that was wary around vampires was trying to jump out of the window, and take Derek with it.

"My lady," I wasn't sure what the actual honorific for addressing a force of nature was, but I was going to hedge my bets and go with the most obsequious. “I cannot imagine why I have attracted your attention, I am just a simple animator.”

She didn't laugh, she wasn't that amused but she shifted in her seat. “You are easily the most powerful animator on the west coast, and most likely the most powerful in the United States, and certianly in the top five for the continental united states since your half bond with the fledgling." Derek was three hundred years old and then some and she called him a fledgling. The overwhelming terror was in the lump in my throat, the one that was the size of a small planetoid.

"One of my coterie," she had explained, “whom you would best know as Kali got it into her fool head to make a challenge to the throne," she looked faintly amused, but I knew who Lady Winter was, my mother had told me tales about her, calling her Szepasszony, the fair lady, the creeping frost who slipped under cradles to devour children. She seduced young men and danced in hail storms, she was not to be crossed and I wasn't going to be the idiot who did it. There were parts of old Europe where her name was still taboo. I imagine she took the monikor Lady Winter because it didn't tangle in the mouth, but she probably had a hundred names like that.

I never knew if the vamps named themselves after the old monsters, or it was the other way around, and I wasn't nearly stupid enough to ask.

“She thought that if she got herself a powerful human servant and an old, and strong, were and if she killed my own servant she would be strong enough to take me on. She was wrong.” She tilted her head at the last part like Kali had not been with her since the Middle Ages that I knew of. “Oh there were some merits to her plan, but she really has no idea,” she stopped herself, "I mean had, of course.”

I didn't want to know what had happed to Kali, but I did want to know what it had to do with me.

“Have you read Harry Potter, Animator Stilinski?” She had asked then, and I might have impersonated a fish, mouth open, eyes wide brain going where the fuck did that come from. “It would make things easier to explain, I didn't like the movies, I find the entire medium vaguely unsettling, it exists only to trick the eye, and I do not like when the meat gets ideas.”

The Pale Lady, Lady Winter, was a sorceress in the stories, she bewitched, and I wasn't nearly stupid enough to meet her gaze. At all. Ever.

“You see when I killed Kali the bond shattered, as it will do, but she had forged her strength poorly, the bonds were deep but fragile, and it killed the were, Ennis, immediately.” I didn't know the name of many weres outside my acquaintance, they weren’t my problem. “But it did not kill her human, her _Darach_.” She said the word like spitting shit from her mouth. “It devastated her, turned her into something not quite alive, not quite dead, or perhaps she was that before and took life from Kali, that is always a possibility.”

I didn't like where this was going.

“Voldemort fed on the blood of unicorns to keep himself not quite dead, but not alive. The _Darach_ , Giulia, has been making her away from my court preying upon any living powerful thing she can find. Werewolves, cygne, naga.” She said it offhand, “she tried with vamps but she clearly didn't get what she needed.”

There was rumours of an animator in St Louis who had resurrected himself but to keep himself alive was feeding on vamps, up to a century old. I hadn't confirmed the tale myself but it sounded about right. The vamps had not been kind in taking him down.

“She's not dead, not quite, although certainly I thought she was when I left her there. She has been preying her way to find someone suitably powerful to heal her, and I thought she was going after Animator Burkhardt,” that made sense, Burkhardt was powerful, he had trained me and he knew things I'd never know - because some things you learned in the field. “Then you bonded with Theoderic and I knew you were her prey. I have hunted her here, but I’m always one step behind. Travelling becomes difficult.”

“Yeah, hard to top up your tan when you might burst into flames." The snark slipped out of me before I realised I had said it, but luckily I didn't burst into flames for saying it, although it might have been a close thing, because she laughed.

“You are interesting, Animator Stilinski, and perhaps in five hundred years or so you will be a threat to me, but right now we have a mutuality of purpose. I want Guilia dead and you want her to stop feeding on the local populace. Therefore it is best that you put her down. If I act here then there are council issues,” Peter was Master of the City, and Peter was a Mora, therefore Peter’s bloodline came from Moroven, so anything that Lady Winter did in Peter’s territory was in Moroven’s and thus reason for war between the vampires.

It was likely these legal issues that had stopped Lady Winter from destroying Giulia, and because this was my territory (allegedly), so apparently it was my problem.

Oh joy.

It did mean however that it wasn't a _peltier_ who was ruining my week, a _peltier_ was an easy problem - not mine, Morell would find the hunter who was skinning shape-shifters and pass him to the requisite authorities and they’d die a terribly accidental death in custody, and I wouldn't mourn them. It wasn't a necromancer, who would have been much more terrifying, but my problem and probably easier to track, because that sort of power over death left a stain, but instead a half dead _Darach_ , whatever one of those was, who was eating shape-shifters to keep themselves in whatever state of unlife they were in.

Sometimes I think Daehler had it right, locking himself in his trailer and threatening visitors with a shotgun.

After we got out of the car, I stumbled over to Morell, like the legs had been taken out from under me, told her what she said, knowing full well Peter was going to want to know, and then asked one of the locals where the nearest bar that served food was - fuck it, I was taking a night off and I was going to have chili and something very alcoholic, and Derek was going to pay for it, and then make sure I got home before sunrise.


	13. Chapter 13

Papa Deaton used to be a vet, he sometimes still did some emergency work but mostly he made his fortune as a Vaudaun priest. He was powerful and dangerous and the two of us couldn't stand each other. I would pretend it was professional rivalry but the two of us were just like chalk and cheese, even if we both raised the dead.

What he did was entirely different from what I did, I animated a corpse giving it the impression of life, and when I was done with it I put it back, he created zombies and kept them around for household chores. It was the least of what he did but it was the officially most impressive to the non-magical folk.

I could get a confession from a corpse, he got his house cleaned.

I made a point never to eat when he offered me food, I was always paranoid I'd get a finger in it. Zombies did fall apart after all, no matter how carefully you tried to maintain them. I think it was one of the reasons that Animators were always careful to put them back when we were done. The first time I did an animation it was humming "put that thing back where it came from or so help me", it was that kind of job.

I met Deaton in Clancy Brown's a dive bar on the outskirts of town that had the best chili and a no- supernatural policy that meant anyone who was supernatural, as opposed to simply using it, was barred. The proprietor had two exceptions to the rule, Derek who had done something for him in the nebulous past and Parrish because no one knew what he was, just that he didn't cause trouble with it, and as a police officer if trouble went down he finished it.

The chili was epic, made over a course of three days with fresh tomatoes, peppers and zucchini in a sauce waterd with beer and three types of meat, chunks of stewing steak that melted in the mouth, ground pork mince and spicy paprika sausage meat and served with a dollop of sour cream, and a spoon. Everyone was particularly sure the place should have lost it's ability to serve food years ago but the chili, the only food they did serve, sure as hell made up for it.

I didn't eat there often because when I did I ate enough to land me in bed for three days groaning over my food baby. They also did this bottled ginger beer from Australia which was worth the hazard on it's own.

So I met Deaton in Clancy Browns where I found him sipping a ginger beer from the bottle. When you think of a stereotypical voodoo priest you always tend to either have a black woman with a turban or a huge black man with dreads, Deaton looked like a vet, medium build, soft featured and shaved head. He was wearing a blue henley and jeans, but just because he looked normal didn't mean he couldn't do things that would make superman quake in his boots. Voodoo was about belief and eryone believed Deaton was capable.

He could even heal your pet.

"Is this a courtesy call?" he asked me. He didn't sound dangerous. He was incredibly dangerous though. Derek was propping up the bar. Knowing he would occasionally stop in he had arranged for several very expensive bottles of red wine from his own personal cellar to be available. He had even supplied the glass. Like all vamps Derek had a touch of pretentiousness and prefered to use a gold tipped chalice of a thing for his wine.

I had a bottle of ginger beer and a bowl of chili as big as my head. The clothes I were wearing stunk of smoke and I'm pretty sure the conspicuous stain on my sleeve wasn't ketchup. I really needed a shower.

"Not quite," I told him, "this is a heads up, a warning." I saw the way he closed himself off, he braced himself for an attack that wasn't coming. I meant him no harm, "I had a meeting this afternoon with Lady Winter."

"The Lady Winter?" he asked.

"Yes, and as harrowing as you hink it was it was worse, she's all they warn you about. I've never felt a death so old," I shuddered, "she's hunting our local serial killer."

"The one eating the shifters?" he asked. Of course he knew about that. Papa Deaton's network was better than Peter's. I shouldn't have been surprised. 

"Yeah, apparently it's some kind of power play from her side, the last survivor is caught in some sort of half dead thing eating magical creatures to keep itself alive."

"A lich." He said calmly, taking another swallow of the ginger beer.

"A lick?" I asked, "like the thing in resident evil?"

Deaton didn't roll his eyes but he did take a deep breath before he spoke again. "Not a licker, a lich, L-I-C-H." He always treated me like an idiot, I knew what I needed to know, btu that didn't mean I needed to know much about a lot of the supernatural underworld. Most of them weren't my problem. It meant when I went back to my apartment I was going to spend a lot of time reading, calling experts, I had no issue with skyping experts, it's not like I needed to know more than how to kill things. Beheading and fire were my usual go to's but I set a barghest alight once in my training and the damn thing got stronger.

"So give me the cliff notes, because this thing is determined to eat everyone here with a lick of power." I entirely meant the pun in question.

"A lich is a sorcerer who has managed to put their soul in some kind of phylactery, in doing that they become a living corpse, they need to feed the phylactery."

"A Phil Actory?, what is that?"

Deaton made the disappointed breath again. "Ever hear of Koschei the immortal?" he asked me, "he put his life into his finger bone, so whilst it was safe he was immortal, nothing could kill him. He turned the bone into an needle which he hid inside an egg, tucked up safe inside a duck, the duck was in a hare, and the hare was in an iron chest buried under a great tree in the heart of a primeval forest surrounded by mountains."

"What happened?"

"Someone found and broke the bone." Deaton told me, "he died, if your lich is the same then you don't have to worry about them, but instead whatever it is they've put their death in."

"Is there anything there that could mess up the process?"

"You take your death or soul out of you you become a zombie with free will, to prevent the rot they have to top up their power sources, anyway they can. Like a vampire," he flicked his eyes to Derek who was watching us with a vague intent, "they need to feed, but unlike a vampire they're insatiable." He shrugged, "I am not powerful, but I know how to use power, I don't think I'm likely to be a target but thanks for warning me. But considering the council is involved, anyone who controls the phylactery controls the lich, and if the council wanted to move against people a lich is an easy way to do it." He emptied his bottle. "Hopefully it will be another two years before we do this again."


End file.
